Disciplinary Action
I’m an expert time-waster. If I don’t have some sort of deadline I can throw away whole weeks. That’s a problem when you’re pursuing a career where you don’t have a boss standing over you, arms crossed and glowering. What I need to do is re-train myself.
My affinity for scooby snacks is sadly lacking so those are out as training tools. Instead I decided to try an approach whereby if I fail to achieve my word count for the day the evidence is right there in front of me. In the spirit of that self-flagellation I printed out a form with dates, goals and a space to put in what I actually wrote.
I set myself a deadline. I want to have this draft finished by September 12. That gives me a daily word count of 3000. (For the maths whizzes out there thinking, is she trying to write War and Peace? that excludes weekends and I’m aiming high so when I start carving out great chunks during the editing process I don’t end up with a short story.) That’s manageable. It’s not like I’ve got much else to do during the day, right?
So Monday is day one and I’m already nervous. But if nothing else, I’ll give it my best shot.