Writing Journal 1.28.2018: Disaster, but now I think I see what is coming

For about five seconds, I was tempted to fib on the numbers for this week. But, that’s not how all this works.

Nothing else for it:

+407 words written.

Days writing: 2 out of 7.

Daily writing goals met (500+ words): 0 out of 7 days.

Well, we have a few firsts here. At five days without writing (last Sunday through Friday), I officially went through the longest non-writing streak I’ve suffered since starting this blog. And. of course, the worst word count of that time.

The reasons are simple, other than the usual procrastination. Right now, I am on the last major unwritten scene of my book, with the exception of the final scene. I’ve found myself struggling to complete the scene. That’s ironic, but perhaps connected, to the fact that the scene involves my main character’s last game for a team and shows how he is now emotionally detached from it and even the sport itself.

In addition, there is not a lot of uncharted road left to run on for this novel. After this scene, I will work on rewriting two crucial scenes from the first draft. One of those scenes will be an almost total rewrite of that scene – new location, new participants except for my main character, and new format for the confrontation in question. Afterward, I want to write the final scene of the book.

At that point, I will have a working draft of the book. That’s when I’ll really be in deep with the rewrites and that will take up an extended period of time. A significant factor with that will be how close will I be to my 99,999-word limit. (I am now past the 88,000-word mark.) There is at least one important subplot I have not entered and it might be difficult to include it if there is not room in the book. For both artistic and commercial reasons, I am not interested in breaking that self-imposed limit.

So, the question is, will the next week be a repeat of this debacle, since I still haven’t gotten through that scene? I think the answer is that my report will look different. After some internal debate, I have decided to set a daily goal of one hour 30 minutes of non-distracted time devoted to revising and editing. I will include that in the list. Of course, this will affect the weekly totals and how they are reported, but I think that in the end, it will work out well.

I have also reinstalled Freedom on my laptop, to block the Internet during various times. I think I will experiment with both extended times and shorter bursts of time which put together, would add up to an hour a day.

Let’s see what happens next.