Joyously Prolific

I am going to take a few days of low word counts before I leap into Forward Motion's March Madness next weekend. I'm thinking of it as Spring Break for Zette. I have a ton of things I want to get done around the house, and getting away from the computer for whole hours at a time will be good for me.

Right?

So March appears to be my downfall point for the 3k a day plan. I don't mind. I've already gotten some important work done and feel a great deal less pressure over what I need to get done. There are still a few things out there, but it's looking better.

I reached the end of the final Dark Staff book... but it wasn't as long as I wanted, so I went back and started adding in more right away. It's already grown by over 4k, so I'm doing well.

I have switched over to A Plague of Rats for my main novel for a few days. It's going well enough, though I felt a little lost today and decided to back up from it for a bit. I'm about to throw my main character into even more insanity. He only thought he had trouble before this -- but I'm having a little trouble dropping him into the new spot. I figured a day to think about it wasn't a bad idea.

And there's another really good reason to slow down, and one that I don't mention often enough.

Some stories are slower developing than others. A Plague of Rats is one of those that's taking a little longer to feel out the scenes and move through the pieces. Not all stories rush out of my head at a rate faster than I can type. This, combined with only adding bits and pieces to the Dark Staff novel, means that I'm bound to go slower. And that's good. I'm sure I could find something else to add in that would take up the slack of an extra 1000 to 1500 words, but there's no reason to. Despite how it looks, I'm not interested in the word count numbers. They're only goals and they give me something easy to focus on, especially when I first sit down to write. 100 words at a shot, and I'll get closer and closer. I like the feel of what I'm getting. It's a good first draft and introduction to the characters, which I need before I can really get into a story. They may often be alive in my head, but that doesn't mean I can translate that vision to the story right away.

I've written over 180,000 words so far this year, and while I'm slowing down a bit, I'll probably compensate for that if I really throw myself into March Madness. Or not, if I decide to extend my 'Spring Break' until the end of the month. A lot of it depends on the next few days. Russ left for New York this morning (and paying work, yay!, even if it is only a couple day's worth), and my plan is to work on the house for a while -- specifically the bedroom. It is in dire need of being torn apart and put back together again, and it will take me a day or two to do it. It's nearly impossible to do something like that when there are two of us here, though, because I do a lot of the work during the night when Russ has this idea that he should be sleeping or something.

Okay, I admit it -- I'm also in the mood to do art work and play with photos, and writing 3k a day along with the other work that has to be done, as pretty nearly cut me off from a lot of that stuff. I figure a few days of artistic frustration will get it out of my system.

It sounds like it will be an interesting week.