Welcome to Week 35!
When a friend asked earlier this week how close I was to having a first draft, I was surprised by my own response.
"I think I have the first draft," I responded without much hesitation.
Though, I'm not sure if there are clear milestones that mark the transitions between phases of a creative writing project. Each draft feels somewhat arbitrary. In reality, it's more of a continuum of drafts in progress.
Update
My focus remains on editing. The temptation to add new things, even during editing continues to be strong. My word count has slowly been creeping up from 90K again, but I am letting that be and focusing on the story. With each week of practice, I am learning that pruning sentences, paragraphs, and entire chapters do get easier.
No other projects in the past have tested my confidence as much as this undertaking, so I found some solace in this advice from Neil Gaiman.
Get comfortable with rejection. You are always going to be rejected as a writer. You need humility and conviction/arrogance that what you are writing is brilliant and the world needs to read it. You need to think that you are brilliant. It's ok that you are not.
I have a hard time embracing the advice in its entirety, but the idea resonates nonetheless.
Words and Data
In a conversation with a different friend, we were talking about words and data, and how even when one was working on words, there is no shortage of data. Which, being the data nerd I am, sent me down the rabbit hole of data surrounding this project. Here are a few highlights:
YTD hours spent writing- 244 hours. This does not include time away from the computer when the story is still humming along during runs and daydreams😊.
It is somewhat scary to think that my whole year of writing boils down to about six typical workweek.
Number of words still in the Project: 119,215
First Draft Word Count: 92,683
Total Writing days: 157
July was the most productive month word count-wise while June and September were the least( Travel and Sickness).
August was the most productive( or unproductive, based on how you look at it) month according to time spent on writing.
Goals for the coming week(s):
Continue rewriting
Ideas I was trying to incorporate.
Ideas from previous weeks:
As always, thank you for following along with my writing journey. Until next time, keep writing and stay inspired.
What are you writing this week?
P.S.- If you are new here, you can learn more about the project and find the previous week’s updates here.
“This does not include time away from the computer when the story is still humming along during runs and daydreams”
☝️💯
I find many of my best writing ideas come during long drives when my analytical brain is in the backseat idling. It is amazing what a little bit of downtime to free associate can produce