One of the reasons that aiming for a small amount of work each day is effective for me, is that it’s hard to say I can’t find the time. A single story idea, a thousand words, twenty-minutes of editing, a short blog post. None of it seems like a lot, but doing it every day adds up.
Today I had Oscar’s friend over from school and if I’d had a lot of editing to do, I might not have done any. The excuse that I couldn’t make the time would be right there. But twenty-minutes isn’t much time, so I did it.
In a single day, twenty-minutes doesn’t look like much, because it isn’t. But that’s ten hours a month, 120 hours a year. That’s more than I think I would manage if I was aiming for 40 minutes a day or something.
I think the key is that it’s easy to do, and difficult to make excuses not to do. If I can’t find 20 minutes to do some editing then I would have to question how committed I am to all this.
The writing is continuing to go well. I haven’t hit the pit of frustration yet, so I’m probably still quite early in the story, but I’ll get there. This is story number four and I’m beginning to see patterns in things.
—
Pre-Production
Stories planned (total): 20
Production
Words written today: 1,040
Words written total: 39,116
Plus / Minus target: +3,116
Currently writing: The Lottery
Post-Production
Minutes today: 24
Minutes total: 97
Plus / Minus target: +17
Currently publishing: Sisterhood