Day 900: Writing streak, scene goal

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I felt absolutely terrible this morning, so I took medication and relaxed, waiting for the medicine to kick in and the symptoms to calm down. It took a while, longer than I had expected, and by then, I was so tired that it was hard to force myself to get started on work.

However, it was my writing streak that saved me this time. I try to do at least 100 words each day, and I hadn’t yet done my writing for the day, so I needed to at least sit at my desk to get that done. Just the act of firing up my computer helped get me in a better frame of mind, and I got started on my writing almost immediately. I wasn’t even aiming for only 100 words—I was ready to work as long as it took to finish the scene I was writing, since I had stopped in the middle yesterday.

I finished the scene and decided to start the next one, and finished that, too. I think it really is very motivating for me to set scene goals rather than word count goals for each day. I seem to end up getting a lot more done that way.

Since I got started on my work a bit late, I only got 3.5 hours of writing done, and 3700 words, and also about half an hour of editing a previous scene that needed something added. I only have 4 more scenes left to write, although the epilogue will actually be quite short, so maybe more like 3.5 scenes left.

I’m disappointed that the book isn’t done yet, but I hadn’t realized that I would still have IBS issues since I’ve been trying to be extra careful of my diet. But it just wasn’t possible to predict that some foods I thought were okay would cause me to react. However, I know better for next time. According to my food journal, I should start feeling much better starting tomorrow, when the bad food is out of my system. I hope I get a lot of work done tomorrow. I’m so close to finishing this book! Then I can get started on my To Do list for self-publishing this puppy.

Writing streak: 379 days

My takeaway for today: Just the act of getting in front of my computer in order to keep up my writing streak can help me get started on work.

My second takeaway for today: Having a scene goal rather than a word count goal for the day helped motivate me to write more than I might otherwise.

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