Needless to say, I did not write as much as I did the first two weeks; however, I’m still on course to finish the journey with 80k. What’s going to help me with this? Well, I finish a summer class next Wednesday, and from then ’til fall semester starts, I’m going to attempt to write more than the needed 520 words a day. That way, once school starts back up full blast, the 520 words won’t feel daunting, and I would have accumulated a good two weeks’ worth of “cushion”.

The first two weeks of writing, I wrote 10,347 words.

The last two weeks of writing, I wrote 5,280, nearly HALF. But that’s OK. I’m not beating myself over that.

For the 28-29 days I’ve been writing, I needed to cross through Friday having written 14,560-15,080 words. With my current 15,627, I beat that by 547, so I’m good.

SO, what has caused the slowing down of writing? Two things:

1) Real life – I’ve written a lot in the last week, nearly 20,000 words—but they were words for class/academic work projects. When you write that much, it’s hard to keep writing, and with my tendinitis, the ol’ hands and wrists were like, No mas.

2) Writing without an outline – I’m sorry. I LIVE for outlines, and I know now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I will never write another long project without an outline. Outlines gives me structure, order. They also give me freedom. I never follow them to the letter because you never know what will transpire during the writing process; however, with the outline, I feel free to move and question and explore. Without the outline, I flounder, and as a writer, I don’t like floundering. Soooooooooooooooooo, therefore, OUTLINE for me. LOL

It’s interesting. This book will be the second in the Double Inkwell mystery series, but I’m not sure it’s a mystery, yet. LOL Prologue? Screams mystery. Everything after that so far, not so much, and I think I’m beginning to see why. The first book was about a mystery within the main characters’ lives, so it was immediate. In this book, the mystery is not tangible to the characters’ lives, so we’re able to see more development of the characters’ lives and what’s going on within them and once the case goes “live”, then the main characters become more invested in solving the case–if ANY of that makes sense.

But I’m going to keep writing and then see what others say so that I can go back and rewrite. Working very hard in not letting the “What the hell is this I’m writing” thoughts crowd my mind and keep me from writing.

We’ll see how that goes.

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Tags: Death at the Double Inkwell, Goals, Lady Leo Publishing, novel, Shonell Bacon, Writing

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