Oct 21, 2024
The theory as I understand it, is that it takes 21 days to build a new habit. Seeing as this is my 29th daily blog post in a row, and the 22nd day of writing 1,000 words, I would say that means I’ve built the habit of doing those things. It feels closer to automatic now. I don’t need to keep reminding myself that they are things that have to be done.
I am also in the process of building the habit of coming up with a story idea every day and writing a brief outline. Today is only day six of that, so I guess I can’t expect it to be a proper habit until sometime in November. When I will also be building the habit of editing/publishing every day.
The writing this morning went well. There’s not really a lot more than that to say about it at now: I get up, make coffee, and write. That’s what it being a habit means really, there’s no drama to doing it, I just sit down and get on with it.
The same is less true of pre-production, but only because there is no fixed time in the day when I sit down and do it. I’m guessing the same will be true for post-production because I won’t even be doing that every day. Those things are probably going to take longer to turn into habits but I’ll get there eventually.
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Pre-Production
Stories planned (total): 6
Production
Words written today: 1,158
Words written total: 24,228
Plus / Minus target: +2,228
Currently writing: Son of Mars
Oct 20, 2024
I now have five stories planned, one of which I am currently writing, all of which I like. It might be hard to pick between them when the time comes. That’s not a complaint though, it’s what I wanted when I started this habit.
The idea process is straight forward. I have a little template in Obsidian that looks like this:
IDEA:
A CHARACTER:
THE CHARACTER WANTS SOMETHING:
BUT SOMETHING PREVENTS THEM FROM GETTING WHAT THEY WANT EASILY:
SO THEY STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FORCE:
AND EITHER SUCCEED OR FAIL:
SETUP:
MOVE INTO ACTION:
THE PROMISE IN THE PREMISE:
SHIT GETS REAL:
FINALE:
I start with a vague description and then I work through each step. The last part (SETUP to FINALE) is the actual plan. Usually I go through it in order, but this morning the ending was the clearest image in my mind, so I started there.
It usually takes ten minutes to fill it in, but that’s ten minutes well spent if I avoid floundering around when writing the first draft. And I don’t know, although I suspect, the editing will be quicker as well. So all in all, it seems like time well spent.
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Pre-Production
Stories planned (total): 5
Production
Words written today: 1,159
Words written total: 23,070
Plus / Minus target: +2,070
Currently writing: Son of Mars
Oct 19, 2024
Busy day. We went for a walk in the woods in the morning and then watched Muppets Haunted Mansion. Luckily I got my writing done in the morning because there wasn’t much time the rest of the day.
My new tracker is below. I will add a post-production section on November 1st when I start that.
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Pre-Production
Stories planned (total): 4
Production
Words written today: 1,035
Words written total: 21,911
Plus / Minus target: +1,911
Currently writing: Son of Mars
Oct 18, 2024
I began the day by starting Son of Mars from scratch again, only to decide a few words into that I had it right first time and went back to the original. A bit frustrating, but these things happen sometimes.
The beginning of the story is moving quite slowly, and I think some of it is going to turn out to be world building that doesn’t appear in the final version, but that’s fine. It is set a few hundred years before The Last Outpost so it needs a bit of fine tuning.
I have been thinking about how I am going to track my progress here on planning and editing without dumping loads of numbers at the bottom that don’t mean very much. In the next few days you will see a new statistics footer.
This is the 26th day in a row that I have published this blog and that’s probably the most I’ve ever done. They are generally quite short though, so that only adds up to around 6,000 words. There are some longer topics that I want to write about here, but at the moment I’m just figuring everything out and getting a lot of new habits locked in.
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Words written today: 1,043
Words written total: 20,876
Plus / Minus target: +1,876
Currently writing: Son of Mars
Currently publishing: n/a
Latest release: n/a
Oct 17, 2024
I finished the first draft of The Last Outpost this morning and went straight onto the next story. I enjoyed writing a space story enough that this one is set in the same universe, although much earlier in history when the construction of a Mars colony is taking place.
Son of Mars is the story I planned yesterday. It’s only a very vague outline, but it gives me enough to get started and know roughly where I’m heading.
I also outlined another story, also set in the space colony universe that could be the next story I write, or not, by then I should have a few options to choose from.
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Words written today: 1,028
Words written total: 19,833
Plus / Minus target: +1,833
Currently writing: Son of Mars
Currently publishing: n/a
Latest release: n/a
