Ten Thousand Words A Day

On Monday, December 16th, I was feeling feisty and I decided to write 10,000 words a day for a week. Well, feisty isn't really the right word, mostly I was feeling like a loser because I hadn't been writing nearly as much as I thought I should.
Monday morning I worked out, then ran some errands and did some Christmas shopping. I had lunch with a friend and then came home to clean. By the time my son got home, at three, I still hadn't done any writing. I helped him study for his midterms, made dinner. (Actually I probably hit the drive-thru.)
Now keep in mind I still thought I could pull this off. I had a coke at around 5:30pm, told the kids it was going to be a late night for me and asked them to set their alarms for the next day. You know, in case I wasn't able to get up in the morning on account of all my hard work:)
I put the kids to bed at 8:30 and finally sat down to write. My husband was out of town so it was very quiet in the house. I didn't really like it. I started a movie, just for some ambient noise.
It was actually a really good movie,  I decided to watch it until 9:00pm and then I would turn it off.
At nine I turned the movie off, made myself some (caffeinated) hot tea and sat down for a long night of writing. I felt like I was in college again, pulling an all nighter. Cool!
Wait. No! All nighter's were so NOT cool. I would be completely exhausted the next day, I wouldn't get anything done! I decided it would be much more practical to write 20,000 words on Tuesday than it would be to write so late at night! (Yes, I really did think this made perfect sense!)
I closed the computer, watched the rest of Catch and Release and ended the day with zero word count.
What's the moral of the story?
You've got to just DO it!
I did write on Tuesday, but not ten thousand words. I did write on Wednesday, and Thursday too. Friday I went car shopping from dawn to dusk and Saturday was the same, but my total word count for last week was 7,409 words.
WHAT? I know, right. Where did that even come from? It's far from 10,000 words a day, but it's still pretty good.
Here's what I learned.
When trying to write ten thousand words a day...
-You can't separate your work into chapters or scenes or anything, just write one huge, long story.
-Don't look back to see what color your character's eyes are, or what their names are. You can fix all of that later, just keep writing.
-Don't Google anything. You wanna know how tall the Eiffel Tower is? Who cares! Check it later, just keep writing.
-And last, but not least, if writing is the last thing on your "To Do" list, it will not get done. Put it up there at the top off you list. Or better yet, don't make a list at all, just DO it!

P.S
For the new year my resolution (of sorts) is to put my daily word count into a calendar (photo above). I'm going to try, scratch that, I AM going to take a picture of the book and keep my blog updated with my progress. Hopefully 2014 brings lots of words...and maybe at least a few of them can form an actual novel.
Happy Christmas to you all! May 2014 bring you peace, good health, and joy...and maybe a best selling novel:)

Write Like You Don't Know You Can Fail

Have you ever had someone you know, all of the sudden, decide to do something completely stupid? Recently someone I know decided that she was going to be a photographer. The kicker is, she was really terrible at photography. Her pictures were lousy and she didn't even know how to use Photoshop. Or even Lightroom. Her camera wasn't all that fancy or expensive, and I'm pretty sure she only had one lens! What?!

She simply announced on Facebook that she would charge $100 for a sitting fee and the disc of photos she took was yours to keep. Bam! She was completely inexperienced and she was advertising herself as a photographer. What a nut!
 I would have done things so much differently. I would have researched photography, practiced all day and night. I would have read everything I could get my hands on. I would have bought the best camera money could buy (and a couple of fancy lenses) and then learned to use Lightroom AND Photoshop. (All the best photographers know both!)
 I would probably take pictures for free for about a year or two and then, and only then, would I start charging people. Actually, I probably wouldn't EVER start charging people because I would never have felt like I was worthy enough to charge for my services.
 What happened to my friend the photographer you ask? The girl who did EVERYTHING WRONG?  I bet you can guess what happened! She succeeded.
She is currently a working photographer. Not just working, but successful. She's making money and her pictures are looking great!

There's a reason why I didn't use writing as an example, (it hits too close to home) but I easily could have. If you're a wanna be writer you can probably relate.
So what's the lesson in this? Now listen close, you might have heard this before.
Nobody's perfect!
There it is. We have to quiet the perfectionist in our minds.
We have to decide that we're good enough to put our work out there for the world to see. We are good enough to call ourselves writers.
We have to find the confidence, that same confidence that lead a mediocre (at best) photographer to start her own business. People do it all the time and it can be you.

 If failure is not an option for you then eventually you're going to have to finish that novel and put it out there for the world to see. Eventually you're going to have to call yourself a writer, or a photographer or whatever it is you've been dreaming of being. And if you work hard enough, and long enough, and pretend like you have no idea that you could fail at whatever it is you're working on, you'll have no choice, but to succeed!

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."-Kurt Vonnegut