So last summer, I decided to stop tracking my daily writing word count. \u00a0There were a lot of reasons for this, mostly having to do with the way it led me to focus on the wrong things and beat myself up in ways that were ultimately counterproductive.<\/p>\n
The trouble is, I’d structured almost my whole writing life around keeping track of word counts. \u00a0Without an easy way to measure my daily progress, it was really hard to know whether I was being productive or not. \u00a0As a consequence, I didn’t push myself as hard as I could have, and ended up bouncing around between projects without really finishing anything.<\/p>\n
Well, I think I’ve figured out a solution to that. \u00a0Instead of tracking daily word count, I’m going to use a countdown timer to make sure I spend at least X number of hours each day writing new words. \u00a0Whenever I take a break to do something else, even if it’s writing related, I’ll pause the timer, then start it up again when I get back to writing.<\/p>\n
I tried it out last week, using a program called TimeLeft<\/a>. \u00a0It worked out pretty well, I think. \u00a0Definitely gave me a lot more insight into my writing process. \u00a0I think it will help me to get some good habits back, like writing in the morning and staying focused for longer. \u00a0It will also help to have something I can accomplish each day. \u00a0It doesn’t matter how much I write, just that I spend the time actually writing.<\/p>\n To start out, I’m going to shoot for four hours of daily writing time. \u00a0It might not sound like a lot, and without a day job perhaps it isn’t, but I think it’s a good starting point. \u00a0Then again, if the guys at Writing Excuses are right<\/a>, I might end up scaling back a bit. \u00a0Either way, I’ll probably end up adjusting that goal over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n Other writing stuff I’d like to figure out this year:<\/p>\n That’s just about it for now. \u00a0Hopefully, it will turn out well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So last summer, I decided to stop tracking my daily writing word count. \u00a0There were a lot of reasons for this, mostly having to do with the way it led me to focus on the wrong things and beat myself up in ways that were ultimately counterproductive. The trouble is, I’d structured almost my whole… Continue reading A new daily writing approach<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[857,650],"tags":[154,251,197],"class_list":["post-7990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sw","category-sk","tag-self-discipline","tag-writing-habits","tag-writing-lifestyle","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-24S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990","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=7990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7992,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions\/7992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n