My sweet baby girl joined our family on October 19, so we're just one day shy of her 3-month birthday. For those without much experience with newborns, those three months are often regarded as the fourth trimester. It's arguably with hardest three months of anyone's life (although tell that to a mom with a toddler...) and very trying for both mom and baby. In the midst of that chaos, I've written almost as much as I wrote in the previous year. I finished the first draft of SIGNAL HILL, a project I started last January, and I'm more than half through my first draft of my new story, THE EXTRAORDINARY ART OF FALLING. You know what I've learned? You have as much time as you make.
Here's the thing: I needed to take it slow last year. My pregnancy literally drained the life out of me. I fell asleep putting my toddler down for naps more often than not, then crashed the minute he went to bed at night. I had horrid morning (all-day) sickness, my pelvic bones separated too far too fast and Sweet Lump decided to settle on my sciatic nerve about halfway through. Fun stuff. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with needing 10 months to finish a 53k draft. It just got to me. I know I can write faster.
When the idea for FALLING came to me over the holidays, I knew I wanted to write it as fast as I could. When I sat down to write the first page, I wrote almost 3k in one day. Last fall, 500 words made for a good day. With that kind of jump on things, I decided to try to write the first draft by the end of January. Aiming for 50k, I'd need to write 1,613 words a day to finish. With the kids napping at the same time most afternoons, I get about two hours a day to right. That's a totally management goal.
But life is never so simple. We've had sickness and visitors and kids who refuse to nap.
That's where discipline comes in. I might not hit my word count goal every day, but I'm only about 500 words off from my goal for the month. If I write less one day, I make it up as soon as I can. If my husband works late, I write. If the kids nap long, I write. I type between 300-600 words each day on my smart phone utilizing an app called Evernote. It automatically syncs with my computer so I just have to copy it over to Word when I sit down to write on my laptop again. I keep writing, even if I don't have a whole lot of inspiration. It's almost a mania.
The fun part of writing like this is how immediate the story feels. The characters are clear and the story crisp because I'm working on it all the time. I don't need to reread old scenes to remind myself who these characters are or how they'll react. It's all so fresh.
It's exhausting. I have no idea what I'll do come February. But it's fun to try something new. I need a challenge right now (since parenting obviously isn't enough!) and getting this out so fast is definitely that!
Do goals work for you? Can you set - and meet - your own deadlines or do they just make you feel guilty when you miss them? I've been on both sides and I have to say, I like meeting them better ;)
