Chasing Motivation

Happy Monday! At least, I hope it's as happy as a Monday can be. How was the weekend for everyone? Mine was exceptionally lazy, even by my weekend standards. I think the only thing I did of note was help my mum do her shopping, which mostly consisted of me pushing the trolley while she yelled that she didn't want to be responsible for other people's meals anymore (which is what happens every time she goes food shopping).

So I was thinking about this this morning. Not the food shopping thing, but the fact that I really struggle to be creative at the weekends. In part this is because I have to set aside so much time to prep and post perfume orders, and my average weekly orders have doubled since September. In part it's because I'm just really fucking lazy at the weekends and I like to lounge around watching conspiracy documentaries with Kyle or aimlessly surfing the internet. And I was thinking this morning that I get very caught up in "making the most of my free time" at the weekend, but that what I do isn't actually making the most of that time at all, especially if I want to get back into writing this year.

And then I remembered a book about plotting I read a few years ago that had one tip that absolutely made all the difference to me when I was writing AFTERLIFE: write 350 words first thing in the morning. 350 words sounds like nothing at all, but that's part of the point - it's an easy number to reach first thing in the morning without stopping you doing everything else you have to do. And there was something about getting done those 350 words early in the day that kept my brain working for the rest of the day. By the time I got home from work, my head was full of what was going to happen next, and I was ridiculously motivated to get back to work on the book.

So I'm going to reinstate this practice. I think it will be more practical for me to do this when I first get to work, as I usually get there early enough that squeezing in 350 words of writing shouldn't be a problem. Even if I get nothing else written that day, that still gives me 2450 words a week. That's...way lower than I used to be able to manage, but I also used to not have a serious muscle/nerve problem in my right arm, so there we go. My hope is that getting those 350 words down will spur my imagination enough that I can get another 1000 words down later in the day, or at least another 750 or so. If that works, I have a minimum of 7k a week, which easily beats out my current rate of "maybe 2k every fortnight or so."

So this is my plan, starting today. As I'm off work today, I really have no excuses for not getting at least 350 words down in the next twelve hours. I've been working on a novella starring Shannon from my Urban Wolf series, which is currently sitting at about 3k. By Friday my hope is to pass the 10k mark. Keep your fingers crossed for me!