Day 54: Increasing my writing stamina, I think

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I took a look at my writing stats a bit last night. When I take the average number of minutes I write each day, my monthly average for June was 281 minutes, but my monthly average for July so far is 303 minutes. The averages include even the days when my daily minute count was low because I had health issues.

So I’m steadily starting to increase the number of minutes I write each day. I guess that means I’m improving my writing stamina! I hope I can continue to improve even when I move from the plotting portion to the writing portion. I think that’ll be the real test.

I’m continuing working on Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) for the serial novel. I got a lot done yesterday, so I hope I can get a lot done today, too!

Speaking of the serial novel, I had no idea it was going to be quite this long. I knew it would have a lot of mini-scenes, but I had assumed it would make the serial novel about the same length as one of the volumes in the regular series. However, now it’s looking like the serial novel might be as long as 5-6 volumes! Or maybe even longer! Ugh!

Writing the serial novel is important—it fits nicely into my series, and it’s also a vital part of the marketing strategy I’ve chosen. However, since it’s plotted to be written as serial mini-scenes, which I’ll be posting on my blog, this novel is a slower pace than the regular series. Also, I think I simply have a hard time writing short novels when I write Regencies.

But I won’t know for certain how long the serial novel will be until I actually write it, so I probably shouldn’t worry about it for now. I think I’m freaking out because I’m seeing the number of mini-scenes grow and grow.

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I plowed through the scenes pretty quickly again today, although maybe not as fast as yesterday. I didn’t get that creative slump at 3 hours like I did yesterday—in fact, I was doing really well and ended up skipping my walk so I wouldn’t break the flow.

Mini-scenes plotted so far: 214
Time spent writing: 7 hours, 11 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 36 minutes

My takeaway for today: I think I’m starting to increase my writing stamina and work for longer hours each day.

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