The three thirds
I’ve noticed a pattern in my writing output this month. The first 25,000 words, about a third of the book, came very quickly. It took about 8 days, over which I averaged 3,320 words. I wrote more than 1,000 words every day, and more than 2,000 all but one. The writing was coming easily–I knew what I wanted to happen, and how. Writing was generally fun, and so distractions were not much of an issue.
But once I hit 25,000, things got more difficult. The next 25,000 took 12 days to write, and I averaged 1,987 per day. Things were incredibly inconsistent–the median was 821 words, and days ranged from zero to 6,144. Things were not coming easy, and writing was hard work, meaning I was easily distracted.
Then, this weekend, I started in on my last 25,000, and I have hopes that we’ll see a blending of the two. The work has not gotten particularly easier, but I may have found a strategy that enables me to get get significant amounts of writing done anyway–specifically, an expectation that I will write 1,000 words each hour. Once I have finished those 1,000 words, whether it takes me the entire hour or only 30 minutes, I can indulge myself in one distraction or another. It worked very well yesterday, when I cranked out 5,395 words.
It seems like a silly thing, but I think this just might be the strategy that gets the book finished before December.
