Day 689: Trying out a word count goal for blocking

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I decided to take a few sick days because I was in so much pain. I felt a bit silly for needing sick days, but I honestly haven’t ever bitten my tongue so badly or had it hurt so much. It also made it hard for me to sleep well since I woke up every hour or so whenever I happened to move my mouth and the pain from my tongue woke me up very sharply. So the past several days have been pretty rough for me, despite how stupid it sounds when I say I only bit my tongue.

On a more positive note, my IBS has not been giving me many problems at all, except for yesterday and today when I started feeling some cramping. And while I was sick, I got a ton of laundry done.

As for my writing, I’m going to continue what I’ve been doing for the past week or so, which is to write the bare minimum of prose in order to have more time for blocking and get that done as soon as possible.

I was really torn about whether I should do this or not, because I want to get books 4 and 5 of the series released so that I don’t lose my readers. However, I made the mistake of trying to block a series at the same time I’m writing it, which is messing with my memory since I have to shift between two different time points in the series.

I waffled about this a lot—and I have a feeling I’ll waffle about it again at some point in the future—but I finally decided to follow the most logical course of action, which is to finish the blocking first so that I won’t have to keep shifting between points in the story timeline. This will delay the release of books 4 and 5, but it will help me to not make continuity errors.

It pains me to make this kind of decision because I really want to release books 4 and 5 more quickly. But I also know that if I devote several solid hours a day to blocking, I’m more efficient at it and will get more done in that time period than if those hours were spread out over two or three days.

I am also hoping that those long hours of blocking will give me more practice in deep focus so that I can be more efficient. To help train me in deep concentration, I decided to try to implement a word count goal for my blocking.

Right now, I’m only tracking how much time each day that I spend on blocking, but I’m going to try aiming for a word count goal for my blocking. It’s easy to do on 4thewords and I think that if the word count goal is high enough, it will force me to write faster when I’m blocking. It will also force me to do more free-writing when I run into plot problems or logic issues.

Also, a high word count at the end of the day, even if the majority of those words are for blocking and not in my manuscript, can be very satisfying for me because I have an Achievement-based personality.

I already know that small word count/short time limit monsters on 4thewords definitely motivate me to write more. So I thought that a word count goal would do the same for my blocking. It would make me keep typing, even if I’m just free-writing, and that will make me stay focused rather than get distracted.

It also might even help me finish the blocking faster since I’ll be doing more free-writing than normal—most of the time when I’m blocking, I stop and stare at the screen when I get stuck and have to think of a solution to a problem or make a decision about the story. Free-writing might help me make those decisions faster, or come up with solutions faster. I’m not entirely positive about that, but I figure it won’t hurt to try and see.

The problem is that I’m not sure how many words to aim for each day. It also probably depends on how many hours of work I can devote to blocking—some days, I have a lot of house chores to do and so I have less time for writing work.

I guess for now, I’ll set 2500 words as my daily word count goal for blocking, and then a stretch goal of 5000 words. I finally broke down and looked at my words per hour rate for writing prose, and my average is about 800 words an hour. I know I write a lot faster when I’m blocking, especially if I’m free-writing, so I think 2500 words shouldn’t be too hard. I guess I’ll look at my blocking word count today and adjust as necessary.

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Well I really over-estimated how much I write when I’m blocking. I barely got 1500 words done on my blocking today. I didn’t have to do much free-writing, because I knew where I was going with the story, but it still took me a while to figure out how to block the scenes.

However, I don’t think a word count goal for my blocking is a bad thing. I might not have gotten much written today, but I can use it to spur me to block my scenes faster rather than waffling about what to do. It might force me to focus more and concentrate on the blocking.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 5 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 24 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 538 words

Writing streak: 168 days

Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 16 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 1527 words

Blocking streak: 162days

Hawaii series:

Writing: time spent: 7 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 144 words

My takeaway for today: Try out a word count goal for blocking to see if it pushes me to focus more and write faster.

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