A Bit Low Today

My wordcount is now officially only 370 for today. I have some time left to try for more, but I'm just too tired. Writing my MC as, amongst other things, he deals with his father's death is not easy. I'm not sure I'm doing it justice yet, but even the way I'm writing it now is emotionally exhausting for me. In some ways writing can be a lot like acting. Actors often call on emotional memories to act the emotions their part requires. When I write I usually feel the emotions (from memory or imagination I cannot say) I'm putting my characters through.

Regular Pace

Back to the normal 500 words today. Not another sprint like yesterday, but writing the emotional repercussions of my MC seeing his father die (from his POV so far) isn't exactly easy. I'm pretty sure they're not coming out right yet either, but that's for edits (I seem to be saying that a lot these days). At least I'm feeling a bit better physically today - knock on wood.

Going Strong

The writing went very well tonight. I got 805 words in 31 minutes, which is never a bad thing. I thought about pressing on for a while, but decided I've given myself enough to deal with for now. My male MC, Kevin, just saw his father die, and it wasn't pretty. His father was hit in the head with a spatial pulse that destroyed a large part of his skull and sent his brain oozing out. I may have to edit back the squick value when I get to revision.

So in summary, and continuing from yesterday's post, a bad situation for my characters makes for good writing, but I don't want to take it too far. I have to go through at least some of what Kevin feels to write it and quite frankly I've given myself enough of that for tonight. Especially since I've not been feeling well physically, a strange sensation (not really pain) in the lower part of my stomach. It behaved itself during the 31 minutes of writing earlier, but now it's acting up a bit again.

Bad Situation For Characters: Good Writing

The writing went well today. There's some stream of consciousness in there that probably won't survive editing, though I hope it does convey a sense of urgency. The trouble for my characters is growing, and the writing is picking up 500 words was not that difficult today. I hope to go 600 or better tomorrow, there should be enough trouble for my characters and enough action to keep me going.

A Little Late

Well it took twenty minutes past the 23:00 target tonight, but I am back at over 500 words. Somehow writing doesn't seem to work the way it's supposed to right now. Fortunately it is working the way it's not supposed to (at least not for me). Even today I kept running into trouble just trying to write. So I opened up a plain-text editor and started to plot in more detail than I've ever done before. Four sentences to cover the last three hundred words of today.

"I'm supposed to just write!" my mind screams at me. And I can only answer my mind that it's certainly got a point. But even though it's not my usual 'whichever way the muse kicks me' way of writing, it got three hundred words done in little time. More to the point I had fun doing it: as long as the writing is fun I'm not going to complain.

The First Day It's Official...

and I didn't make my 23:00 target time. Even so I'm calling it quits with just over 250 words for the day. I'm okay with that for today because I did spend part of my writing time on space station design again.

Actually calling what I've designed a space station is an insult to honest space stations everywhere. It's a loose grouping of ships held together by tubes. The reason it's a station is that the ships have had their drives removed, except for a few small units used to keep the station in one place. It's sort of a low budget do-it-yourself space station.

Officially Moving My Writing Time

After a number of days in a row finishing early I've decided to officially change my main writing time. The aim is now to finish writing for the day by 23:00 at the latest, rather than midnight. I can still go to midnight if I want to (or have to) but if I get 500 words by 23:00 I can stop for the day without feeling guilty.

Today's 500 words came with relative ease, but they took quite a while anyway. The earlier writing time is part of that, I have to multi-task my writing a bit more if I do it earlier. But I'm sure I'll get used to that before long and finishing up earlier does give me more time to wind down after writing. Or to put it another way it gives me a better chance of being in bed before one o'clock in the morning.