Another post that is a bit late. Whatever. That’s not what this is about. What it is about is what I did last week. Namely, setting myself a goal and achieving it.
One week ago I set myself the goal of completing the outline for my the second book in my series. My story will have about 26 chapters when I’m done, give or take one on either side of that. At the time I had 11 chapters written, the next 4 were fully outlined, and then a lot details for the rest of the story but nothing that could be said to be done.
I told myself and my writers group that I would have it done by the end of the week. Friday at midnight, to be exact.
Friday night came and, you know what? I finished. With 30 minutes to spare.
I took the weekend off writing to relax and do somethings around home that I had neglected throughout last week. Today I returned to the story, waking up at 5AM to write for 1 hour before getting ready for work. Following my outline, I was able to write almost 600 words in that 1 hour.
I kept thinking about the story throughout the day, too. I wrote a on scratch paper at work because I couldn’t stop the story from coming out. I haven’t written since coming home tonight as I need to work on other things than the story, but when I left work I had around 1,000 words.
Not too shabby for Day 1 of writing from a complete outline. I’ve gone off my outline at the moment, but that’s what happens. Outlines are there to be like rails on a bowling lane; your story might veer from side to side, but it will hit the rail instead of going into the gutter and roll back on course.
Now, let’s see what Day 2 brings!
I told myself and my writers group that I would have it done by the end of the week. Friday at midnight, to be exact.
Friday night came and, you know what? I finished. With 30 minutes to spare.
I took the weekend off writing to relax and do somethings around home that I had neglected throughout last week. Today I returned to the story, waking up at 5AM to write for 1 hour before getting ready for work. Following my outline, I was able to write almost 600 words in that 1 hour.
I kept thinking about the story throughout the day, too. I wrote a on scratch paper at work because I couldn’t stop the story from coming out. I haven’t written since coming home tonight as I need to work on other things than the story, but when I left work I had around 1,000 words.
Not too shabby for Day 1 of writing from a complete outline. I’ve gone off my outline at the moment, but that’s what happens. Outlines are there to be like rails on a bowling lane; your story might veer from side to side, but it will hit the rail instead of going into the gutter and roll back on course.
Now, let’s see what Day 2 brings!