Why did I do this? The best answer to that, I suppose, is that I started trying to write 250 words every day back in August 2012, but it took me until the following February to not miss a day. I wanted to see if I could write every day for a year. 250 words isn\u2019t much. If I know what I\u2019m writing, it takes less than 10 or 15 minutes. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s a big if, though. One of the challenges was what to write when my main project was planning or revision. That\u2019s how I ended up with a big chunk of that second novel–my novel-planning process involves writing lots of snippets. Some of them, most of the early ones, are getting thrown out because they ended not being appropriate for that book. But I’m keeping enough that I had half a draft of the book before I started actually \u201cwriting\u201d it.<\/p>\n
In that sense it was a success. But I\u2019m not continuing with the challenge. My new goal is to write 100 new *good* words of fiction a day.[2] There weren\u2019t many days where I just blurted out words to check that day off on my calendar, but there were enough. Besides, going with the concept of deliberate practice<\/a>, it\u2019s quality of effort that counts.<\/p>\n [1] The first time I did that calculation<\/a>, I left off the units, which gave me this:<\/p>\n So, had I written these words at a rate of one a day, while lying on my back outdoors, it is likely that a bird would have pooped in my mouth. Good to know.<\/p>\n [2] That\u2019s for the whole year. Right now I\u2019m finishing that novel so my word count goal is much higher. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Thursday, I wrote 289 words. Nothing special about that, except that it was the 365th day in a row that I wrote at least 250 new words of fiction. In that year, I wrote big chunks of two different … Continue reading ![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Screen-Shot-2014-02-05-at-9.25.24-PM-300x49.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n