So earlier this week I had a lot on; chores and errands to take care of, wasn't getting much sleep...and I thought about all those times late at night when I was relaxed, a little buzzed, and the writing would flow. I wouldn't be tired exactly, just mellow. So, I thought, what if I tried fooling my brain into thinking I was relaxed, rather than dog-tired? What if I tried writing anyway? I could at least get 500 words out before bedtime, right? Maybe even a thousand?
Let's just say on Monday, when I was more tired than I had been in a long time, I got way, way more than a thousand words done, an occurrence which has...well, occurred...on a number of occasions this week.
God knows what's wrong - right? - with me and I have no clue why this is happening now but it appears I have my mojo back. Probably the desperate state of having deadlines looming, knowing that if I don't get these damn manuscripts dealt with, my reputation as a mature, professional individual will be-- All right, all right, you can all stop laughing now.
So. What's coming up? All I can say about A Little Death is that manuscript tweakery and revisionising is happening as we speak. At a very, very rough guess, it'll be released around about late summer, but that could change, and I'll be sure to let you know if/when it does, or if I hear anything more specific than that.
According to MS Excel, Stay the Night has reached the glorious 50% mark, a goodly chunk of that having been written in the past week. It won't take as long again to get to 'the end' because my writing's speeding up these days. The second half will be written with much more ease than the first, methinks.
What's my secret? Well, Previously I've always written while online. I switch on either of my computers, and the WiFi kicks in automatically. As an experiment, however, and on my friend Tiffany Reisz's suggestion, I hit the WiFi off button and tried to write 1,000 words in an hour. Did I? Oh yes. Made it in 40.
It seems stupendously obvious that switching off the internet = moar wurdz get writ, but there you go. I'd assumed it would have no effect on me because I'd always written while online before, but...I was stalling, much slower...a difference in my mojo necessitated a difference in my writing methods to nudge it back to life, right? It was a lighthearted experiment that showed great results, so it looks like I'm one of those writers who needs to get offline to get any work done these days. Because I type fast, I know I'll be able to check my emails or tweet a few times within 45 minutes or so, but that's what works for me. Yes, I could easily hit the WiFi button again, but that would be cheating - no-one else would ever know, but I would.
And when I see the numbers ticking over on my Stay the Night spreadsheet, well...I don't want to do anything to piss the muse off again.
James agrees.
I tend to do most of my writing in my lunchbreak, on my netbook. I still have my big computer hooked up to the internet in case I need to quickly Google something, but I find I'm definitely less distracted that way. Setting an achievable daily word target also helps me no end.
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