{"id":12,"date":"2007-08-28T23:38:39","date_gmt":"2007-08-29T05:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=12"},"modified":"2007-08-28T23:38:39","modified_gmt":"2007-08-29T05:38:39","slug":"3000-words-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/3000-words-today\/","title":{"rendered":"3,000 Words Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yeah, I did about 3,000 words in The Lost Colony<\/em> today.\u00a0 I’m just about caught up to the place where I was before I decided to rewrite the first chapter.\u00a0 About a third of that was cut and pasting from the previous part, but I did have to substantially edit it.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is that it was a struggle to get myself settled down and actually writing, but once I did, the time flew by like nothing and so did the words.\u00a0 Last night, I didn’t write anything because it was late and I was very tired, and I figured that it would be better to make it up today.\u00a0 I figure that goals are only useful if they push you to the best possible end.\u00a0 They’re not there to make you feel guilty or satisfied, they’re there to get you to do something.\u00a0 If I get overly swamped with schoolwork, or a family death happens, or I’m in desperate need of sleep, I’m not going to make myself spit out 500 words of forced prose.\u00a0 Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking or saying this.<\/a>\u00a0 (I highly recommend Mur Lafferty’s podcast, by the way.)<\/p>\n

All day today, I had it in the back of my mind to sit down and write, but whenever I tried, I always distracted myself.\u00a0 It was weird.\u00a0 I need to get past this, but I’m not sure how.\u00a0 I figure it will happen naturally as I get deeper in the story.\u00a0 I think that writing is most enjoyable when you really believe passionately in the story itself.\u00a0 I think that that’s also one of the best motivators for writing.\u00a0 I’m sure there are others–like, for example, starvation–but when I really have a good story idea, I almost CAN’T keep from writing.\u00a0 This past winter, I had this awesome story idea of a bunch of guys in someone’s brain piloting him like some kind of spaceship and helping him to overcome his fears and ask a girl out on a date.\u00a0 I kept poring over the story in my mind until one day I just sat down for three hours–and voila! an entire rough draft came out beautifully!\u00a0 One major edit and a few cosmetic changes later, it actually won a writing contest.\u00a0 So yeah, it really helps if you’re passionate about your story!<\/p>\n

The question is, how do you get yourself more excited about the story you’re trying to tell?<\/p>\n

School is coming up, and I’m about to discover if I’ve got too much on my plate.\u00a0 18 credit hours, advanced Arabic plus living in the Arabic house, working part time, no car (not yet–I just sold my old one), and other craziness.\u00a0 Despite all this, I am very much looking forward to going back to school.\u00a0 It will be exciting!\u00a0 It will also be exciting to get involved in Quark again.\u00a0 We’ve had some good online meetings, but only a handful of people have shown up to those (mostly just Reigheena and Aneeka).\u00a0 A lot of people in the writing group have graduated, so I really hope we can bring in some new blood this semester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, I did about 3,000 words in The Lost Colony today.\u00a0 I’m just about caught up to the place where I was before I decided to rewrite the first chapter.\u00a0 About a third of that was cut and pasting from the previous part, but I did have to substantially edit it. The funny thing is… Continue reading 3,000 Words Today<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-the-lost-colony","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}