Barry_Adams via Compfight
You can’t get to the finish line without burning some gas. You can’t finish your novel without burning some midnight oil. Or in my case, some lunch hours. Yesterday I spent my lunch hour writing my novel. I wrote about seven hundred words. That metric probably means nothing to you if you’re not a writer. Just know that it was a decent output for an hour’s worth of typing.
But that’s not enough to get me to the finish line. The end of the first draft. So I’ve got to find a way to write more each day. To somehow boost my productivity to something on the order of a couple thousand words per day. That’s a tall order for someone who holds a full-time job and has two kids. But making sacrifices for your art, is part of moving from an artist to a business person. Artists create but professionals ship. I need to finish this draft in the next month to keep on my publishing schedule.
My plan is to write for an hour before the coffee has even been consumed in the morning. No more leisurely reading email and news over coffee. Lunch hours are all about writing and then, in the evening after the kids are in bed, I need to squeeze in a few more hundred words.
With a little hard work and perseverance, I should be able to knock out another forty thousand words and finish the first draft. Then I can rest. If by rest you mean begin outlining the next novel. Sometime in later July, I need to start hacking into the second draft. You can follow my progress in the Work In Progress meter to the right. –>