February 2020 Challenge - Write Every Day, Better Late Than Never Edition!

Magnus

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Let's hope we're all back on track after this brief interruption, and thank AW admins for working hard to get this place up and running again. They were hit by denial-of-service attacks by some dastardly villains, so feel free to throw them a donation to help fight of this menace! :eek:

Anyway, back to our regular schedule:

This is a thread open to anyone who wants to start, maintain, or reinforce a writing habit. (It can also be about revision, editing, research, or even just the everyday stuff you need to keep up with to support your writing.)

The idea is that repeating something daily will build a habit that becomes stronger over time.

It's entirely up to you how much and in what way you participate. Post your goals if you like, or just check in when you can!

Here are some tips:


  • Set achievable goals – I can't stress enough how important this is. To build a habit, doing something is more important than quantity or quality.
  • Try to do a little every day – even if it's just writing a sentence or two. It reinforces the habit of sitting down to write and makes it easier to get keep it up in the long run.
  • Be adaptive – You'll always be facing new challenges, and what works for someone else doesn't always work for you. What worked for you last week might not work this week. Try different types of goals, different times of the day, and different tricks to reward or motivate yourself. A good habit is what works for you.
  • Be patient – It takes a long time to build a strong habit, and progress happens in tiny increments; you won't always notice it day by day, or even week by week.
  • Failure is a part of the process – Failure is a natural part of improving your skills because it lets you figure out what went wrong so you can do better in the future. When you fail to hit your target, your job is figuring out why it happened. That way, you can find ways to get around your roadblocks (and don't be scared of lowering the bar).

Remember: if you share your experiences in the thread, others might be able to help out with tips, tricks, and support! And it's okay to just take a break for a day or two, or have scheduled days off. Find what works for you.

Good luck, and see you when you get here! :D
 

Layla Nahar

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eeeYYAAAASSSSS!!!!!

I did it - I kept up every day in February - one day I did only one (1!) sentence. Today about 1/2 page, yesterday a whole page, and I've been keeping at all the Life Stuff.

So glad to be back!

Thank you Magnus!!
 

Cindyt

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I can’t believe we are back! Thanks for posting this thread again, Magnus!

Days January 12 - February 16

Word Count 12,152

Research - A lot, including creepy-crawling, masking the time of death (turning the furnace way up), bugs that like to snack on rotting flesh, how long it takes fly eggs to hatch into maggots, breeds of doxies, South Florida hammocks fauna, 60s era 4 in the floor (1967 Chevy Blazer).

Growing Up Buford Blog - A Monster in Human Clothing, which was a record-breaker with a bullet.

Revisions - Reformated all of my blog articles, the historical for pub, and chapters 8 and 9 of the crime, updated the crime novel's scene chart.

Polished - Several scenes of the crime.

I joined the Reading Challenge right before AW went down.

Read - If You Tell - Gregg Olsen, Robicheaux - James Lee Burke

Reading - The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Layla - You did very well! WTG!


I kept at it through the dark season. Lol. It's wasn't funny. I was also sick with a bad cold. Gatsby was boring, let me tell ya. But, Chris P advised that watching one or both of the movie adaptions might lift my interest. I watched a good deal of the Robert Redford, and I think Chris P is on the money.
 
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Helix

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Not sure if this is the right thread for me, but I have so much stuff to do by the end of February and so little self-discipline by which to achieve it.

Travel report: draft for comment to be finished by close of business AEDT today. That's 4 hrs and 20 minutes from now.

Short piece 1: 1500 words to be finished by the end of the week.

Short piece(s): 1100 words (3 pieces?) by the end of the week

Novel: at least 500 words a day until the end of the month, which is *gets out calendar and calculator because thinking is hard* 6500 words.

All I can say is thank goodness for leap years.
 

Cindyt

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Not sure if this is the right thread for me, but I have so much stuff to do by the end of February and so little self-discipline by which to achieve it.

Travel report: draft for comment to be finished by close of business AEDT today. That's 4 hrs and 20 minutes from now.

Short piece 1: 1500 words to be finished by the end of the week.

Short piece(s): 1100 words (3 pieces?) by the end of the week

Novel: at least 500 words a day until the end of the month, which is *gets out calendar and calculator because thinking is hard* 6500 words.

All I can say is thank goodness for leap years.
Haha. Sounds like you've come to the right place, Helix. I am revising 2 novels and write a bi-monthly blog article and this thread has upped my output, that's for sure. Welcome aboard.
 

Keithy

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Ooh, glad to be back although it's a bit sudden.

I've:

been working hard on the first draft of "Fire Witch" over the last five weeks. 22830 words.

done lots of research on Mermaids for "Fishy Tail" - discovering all sorts of powers I did not know they had. I think I will be tackling that next.

not done anything towards a first readthrough of Demon Hunter. :-(

All this was interrupted by my mother's funeral a couple of weeks ago, I spent the better part of a week in England.

See you all back here soon.
 
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DanielSTJ

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I've been on and off. Without this thread, I found it hard to get motivated.

Not anymore! We're back in business! I wrote 1200 today, as it was for one of my creative writing classes. I still have work for another of those classes, so that'll add to my word-count for today, but I want to work on my own stuff too! :D

Way to go team! Looking forward to doing this some more and getting those status updates! :D
 

Pterofan

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I'm still here. Damn, I missed this.

And I'll probably still be missing it into March. I've been writing every day, but not always on any of the series books. Then the freelance job loaded me down with work. Then I got sick, the kind of respiratory illness where you need Nyquil to knock you unconscious so you can get some rest. Between the two of them, I've got a hefty pile on my plate so the daily word counts don't really bear reporting. See you in March.

Is anyone else having trouble staying signed in? The site tends to kick me off every time I click to another page. It just happened when I went to comment. Here's hoping this goes through.
 

Magnus

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Day 17 (and a bunch of other ones)

So I've been doing really well after a lot of struggling with getting anything done -- this winter I've had to work hard to stay out of depression. It's been very cloudy for a long time, so even darker than usual, and also I've been eating more vegetarian food. It struck me that I might be having a vitamin D deficiency, so I bought a supplement, and yeah, two days in and I was basically a new person.

So I've been productivising a lot, basically revised my entire novel notes (several 10k of words) and am ready to start working on new material, but letting that rest a while and working on my notes for an essay/blog series on storytelling. So feeling quite good!

Today, I did three 'sessions', which is basically concentrated bursts of working on my writing (any form of active, interrupted work counts... I time them but I won't tell you their length :p ).

Good to be back, writers!

Layla-- Glad to be here again, nice to see you. :)
Cindyt, Keithy, Daniel -- Good to see some regulars returning, welcome back and happy wording!
Helix -- Certainly this is the place for you!
 

WGough

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Thanks for starting this thread, Magnus!

Post surgery, during my leave, I began working the short story form. Finishing up the second novella from that hiatus. Hope everyone is well.

Goal for February:
Finish this novella.
Revisit revising Book II.
Check in here every day.

Happy remainder of February, y'all!
 

Layla Nahar

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Cindy! All that great work, good to see you :D
Welcome, Helix
Keithy, great work for that time and oh my! I’m sorry for your loss -
Daniel! Congrats on tht 1200!
Hi Ptero :). Yeah, I’ve noticed I have to go through the cloudflare thing a lot. Whatevs. At least were back…
The days are getting longer, Magnus
Gough! You’re back!


I missed everybody a lot!


Day 17


WIP 1/4 page
R/SC - had beans on toast for lunch - home-made baked beans :)
BP - took pics of something I love that’s beyond repair, found new homes for the stuff that was in it (some of that will be re-purposed); earning service (Got to drive the reach-truck. My Favorite!)
 

Helix

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Thanks for the welcome. :e2flowersGo well, everyone!

17 February

Managed to get the report done yesterday. (Although it was more like close of business Western Australian time.)

18 February (so far)

Had a three-hour wait while my car was serviced this morning, so I spent the time drafting two of three short pieces in longhand. They'll need a quite a bit of wrangling in the next draft.
 

Keithy

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I forgot to mention my current weekly working plan.

5 days at 1000 words.
1 day at 500 words.
1 day at 0 words (usually Saturday).

That makes 5500 per week. If I do a bit more then I'll take it (last week I did 6100) but that's about the limit because I run out of time and energy after that.

I also need to diversify my working so that I tack on an hour of research or revising after completing the above quotas.

So, today I did 1271 on Fire Witch. Nicole the white witch is recovering from an almighty magical battle in an underground temple. The enemy sorcerer came off worse than her, but she could not stop him taking the mcguffin. She is traumatized because she could not avoid killing a couple of men in a horrible fashion in order to save her friends. "I'm a healer, not a murderer."

keep swimming! :)
 

Cindyt

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Day 17

Word Count - 1,312

Growing Up Buford Blog - Writing article with the working title And So It Went

Magnus - Glad you’re better! I too fight depression. I found one of my problems is unhealthy died. I’ve started eating better, drinking more water, and exercising. And I feel brighter.

Gough - Welcome back!

Layla - WTG on ¼ page! Good to see you!

Ptero - Hey! I haven’t had any problems being logged out.

Keithy - Wow, you’ve been busy! WTG! Sorry for your loss.

Daniel - You certainly had a productive day!

Helix - You did good!
 

PostHuman

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Hello all, so happy to see everyone in here again! aw is back online yay!

I missed everybody a lot!
Me too! Was happy to learn we also have a discord channel as a kind of backup, lot of aw members on there

Magnus - thanks for getting this thread going! So glad to hear the vitamin D has helped and hope you find the right new project to work on next!

Layla - YASS keep the words coming every day!

Cindyt - man that is an incredible month, great job and grats on 1317 today!

Helix - good luck on the short pieces and the novel, awesome goals just keep at it every single day!

Keithy - yay grats on 22k for Fire Witch, and then another 1271 today!

DanielSTJ - grats on the solid 1200 and welcome back!!

Ptero - welcome back and look forward to hearing about your March project!

WGough - these are solid Feb goals and I hope you recover quickly from the surgery!

I had a fantastic month with the help of two amazing writing tools I discovered, and just wrote the very last line of my WIP a few hours ago! :hooray::partyguy:

It's the first draft, but at least for now the last line is: "Charlie says..." =P

The first tool is an add-on for Google Docs called Writing Habit. It enables you to track your live progress toward daily, weekly and long term word count goals. You can get very granular in the optional settings, even tracking by hour or up to 180 days word count history. Highly recommend this one for anyone who writes using Google Docs, because the default word count tool does not allow you to see your progress while typing.

Link: https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/writing_habit/908529024908


The second tool that helped was this writer bot thingy on discord. tbh, didn't even know there was even such a thing as discord groups for writers until aw went down. The writer bot is a godsend! it enables you to do many short 10 minute or 15 minute writing sprints, sometimes knocking out 40 or 50 wpm. Helped me bump my daily word counts way up. 4k words on Saturday, then my best writing day ever with 8.4k words on Sunday, 6.5k yesterday and then today 3.7k and finished the draft at 54k words.

This sprint tool helped me develop an entirely new mindset for drafting quickly. Before when I would sit down to write, sometimes I would daydream a bit about the scene I was working on, trying to figure things out and time would slip by and it was very slow progress. With the writer bot, when I start a 10 or 15 minute sprint, it gives you a countdown timer X minutes before hand to grab a coffee, review notes etc and figure out what's going on in the scene. And you can't interrupt it or reset, because there are other people in the discord channel sprinting with you.

Because of the countdown timer, I felt pressure to quickly sort out the important details of the scene before the sprint starts. As long as I have a clear idea who is the lead character in the scene, what they want, what their obstacle is and some sort of new question that will be raised at the end, then the words start flying during the sprint. After it's over, I take a few minutes to sort things out and then start again.

Now that I've finished the draft, it's a strange feeling because I've been working on it so long. I don't know what to do next. Not quite ready to jump in to the revisions yet, so I may work on something entirely different for a week or two. I have a kind of psychological thriller screenplay project in mind, might be a fun change of pace from the WIP.

Feb report from Writing Habits add on: https://i.imgur.com/GxRPuSs.png
GxRPuSs.png
 
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Layla Nahar

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Nice work, Helix
Congrats on your 1271, Keithy!
Great work, Cindy with the 1.312
Hello Post - sounds like a really productive time :)




Day 17


WIP 1/4 page
R/SC - housemate email (I’m dealing with that again.)
BP/$$ - earning service; some audio work
 

Keithy

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Cindyt, good to see you in the 1K club.
everyone else - go to it!

Bit of a difficult day, couldn't get going and needed comfort food so ate too much. Limped my way to 414 words. Nicole's having a bit of an existential crisis and wishing she had the power to raise the dead. I'm going to pick some suitable symptoms of psychological trauma for her.

:)

keep swimming!
 

Cindyt

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Day 18

Word Count - 1059

Growing Up Buford Blog - Changed article title to Living With the Devil

Research - Lever action rifles and shotgun shells. Made sure I understood what the word trigger means. Some people misuse it.

Wrong way: He made me so angry it triggered me! (made her mad.)

Right way: A whiff of Obsession perfume triggered me back to the night I was raped. The male and female leads of my crime novel have PSTD and have episodes that trigger them back to trauma. A burning candle triggers her back to the grotto where she was raped. The sound of a copter triggers him back to the Hanoi airport and the Babylift operation during the Vietnam War. His copter was shot down. The babies were burnt alive. He was thrown clear and escaped without a scratch.

Revisions - Blog article

Post - Congrats on finally finishing the first draft of your WIP! Many writers never finish their first draft. WTG

Layla - Another solid ¼ page! Nice!

Keithy - 414 is a righteous word count. Good for you.


I finished the first draft of my next Growing Up Buford blog article. Publishing goal is by Friday. Need to find an illustration.
 
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Magnus

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Day 18 & 19
18 was good, three productive sessions, but today only 1, and it felt drudging -- I'm a little stuck but determined to get through this draft even if I'm not happy with all of it, so that I have something to work with when I come back.

Cindyt -- Yep, I've changed my diet, sleeping habits, and exercise habits over the past few years, which has helped a lot. But this winter, vitamin was clearly a problem.

Everyone, keep writing, keep smiling, and learn to love the journey cause it's the one thing you know you'll always have! :) :)
 

Keithy

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Hello everyone.

Layla - still chugging along I see.
Cindy - in the 1K club again, excellent. I like your triggers too.
Magnus - oh, first draft. Don't expect it to be good; that's what editing and revisions are for.

Today's effort on my part was 1411 words, and what a slog it was. I had Nicole's trauma symptoms, then her enemy used the mcguffin to do some magic. That went wrong, and he's seeking her aid to fix it.

Keep at it, keep swimming... it'll get done.
 

Layla Nahar

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Excellent work, Cindy, congrats on the 1059
Magnus, congrats on the work
Well done Keithy with that 1411


Day 19


WIP So, I got up and stuff, and decided to roll with a skip day
R/SC - work on cleaning one of the rooms I rent out; made a housemate phone call
BP/$$ - Subbed one of my indy projects to a paying market.
 

Cindyt

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Day 19

Word Count - 1029

Growing Up Buford Blog - Finished second draft. Or I should say “drafts.” The original was way too long, so I cut into two stories.

Revisions - article, Chapter 10 of the crime novel

Magnus - It sounds like you did well, though.

Layla - Hope you enjoyed your skip day.

Keithy - WTG on the word count! Your projects sure do sound interesting.

I’m surprised I got anything done on the 19th. I have a sinus infection and the antibiotics make me sleepy. I got a late start with my session , but accomplished more than I thought I would. Now I'm hungry. Grapes and banana, here I come.
 

Helix

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You're all going great guns!

Day 20

Had a bunch of stuff added to the report, so that gets priority because it involves $$$ coming my way

So no further work on all the other things on the list. Hopefully, I will get some of that done tomorrow morning, before getting back to the report in the afternoon. (I might sneak in 15 mins or so tonight.)
 

blake.e.weis

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Glad to see everything is back! Been hard to keep focused these past several weeks. But I finished the 3rd draft on my Invasion of Japan novel. Now I’m taking a step back from that for awhile to see how I want to proceed with it. In the meantime I’ve gone back forth writing and researching my next novel about a US tank unit fighting off a Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II.
 

Magnus

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Day 20
Three sessions and change, fully acceptable, even if the work is rough right now. But the habit is the important thing, and I'm really making progress with that!