November and December were months that I slacked on just about everything: exercise, reading, and writing. I did pick up a few new GRE words with the help of a $1.95 audio book for my IPOD containing the 500 most necessary words. The dude has a deep old man voice which amuses me, but he does not pause when his instructions clearly suggest otherwise. In all fairness: R&R and my trip to California, not to mention the Christmas/New Year Season in general seem to be as good excuse as any to slack a bit.
However, I have turned it around the past couple days. I wrote about 500 words yesterday and already 900 today. Meager in the long range, I realize. I had to restart somewhere. I got great advice from inadvertent slacking a few days ago. I was reading an article I stumbled upon while dreaming that one day I may be able to be a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's of America. This lady, Rachel Aaron wrote an article about increasing her word count. It had a lot of good advice, some of which I knew: I won't write as much if the Internet is available and butt in seat time is a must. However she has a perfect writing triad (or at least that is what I shall forever think of it as), which at each corner had one of the following: time, knowledge and enthusiasm. Time: I have plenty, but I use it poorly. Knowledge: this I was lacking and I didn't even know it! She increased her time by taking at least five minutes to plan out where her novel would go for that day. That way when she sat down to write, she didn't have to waste time making it all up on the spot (which does take longer). Enthusiasm: I sometimes lack, but after planning out where I'm going during my writing time, I am honestly more excited to see every detail play out. While I haven't gotten anywhere near sitting down for six hours to write or 10,000 words per day (which might correlate), I have been able to forgo the session where I sit down to write and become so confused that I give up before I start. So thank you Rachel Aaron (whose link to the mentioned post is below), you have helped me become happier while writing because I'm less confused, more excited, and hopefully will increase my output and finish this damn book!
http://www.sfwa.org/2011/12/guest-post-how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-a-day-to-10000-words-a-day/
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