Many of The Tribe (to steal Rhi's collective) are doing the Allison Kent's 70 Days of Sweat writing challenge and I've enjoyed reading their blogs for daily updates, word counts, road blocks and success tidbits. I love cheering them on -- sort of self gratifying to stand on the sidelines and wave my virtual pompoms in the air.What I find fascinating is how many words these ladies can crank out in a day. These writer-gals are seriously smokin'!!
On a good day - one which offers me 2-3 uninterrupted writing hours (these are rare!), I'm lucky to come out 800-1,200 words ahead. Yes, much of this is my internal editor, wasting precious moments on discovering 'the perfect word', but I've also come to the conclusion that I'm just a slow writer. I plod. I pause. I sip tea.
This is not a woe-is-me actualization, but rather a heads-up -- a warning of sorts -- that I should never get tangled up in a Novel-in-a-Week, NaNoWriMo, or any other type of marathon writing session because I'm doomed to fail. And there is nothing worse than overcoming my inner critic when I've not lived up to his expectations (yes, my inner critic is male).
So although I may have been a bit envious of The Tribe's Sweat, a bit resentful of the fact that I don't have the time to devote, I've concluded that better this little fraction of self-discovery now than the feelings of failure I'd have to overcome later. (Failure is a motivation killer, wouldn't you agree?)
That said, all these mounting word counts are indeed having a motivational effect on me -- so just for fun, I'm going to put a word counter up on my sidebar so I can visually see my wip progress. Trouble is, I seriously don't know how many words I'm aiming for! How lame is that? Let's say 30,000.
