I've read countless books on writing advice. A lot of them give advice on how to turn writing into a habit. Some have advocated setting a timer, and others have advocated for a word count. The word count seems to work the best for me, but that doesn't mean it works all the time. I mean, here I am, writing this post when I should be writing my word count, but I decided a random ramble might be exactly what I need to do right now.
I've recently started writing what I am gong to generously call a book. It will be a short book, but considering I have never been good at writing anything longer than a short story, I'm ok with that. Robert Jordan of Wheel of Time style imagination and commitment, I am not.
I've dicovered a few things about myself. Despite all the books filled with great advice and inspiration, I'm still going to do it my way, whatever that means. Not that I won't still read all the great advice professionals have to offer, it just may not all work for me the way they say it will.
Setting a word count seems to work well for the most part. I set a limit of at 1500 words, maybe more if I'm on a roll. Somedays I can write 2000-3000 words, other days I internally cry as I struggle with 1500 because I've only managed ten words before I started staring at the blinking cursor that mocks me with every flash.
I've also discovered, I am not much of an outliner. I set out at the beginning of this project with an idea and a rough outline as to what should happen, where it should happen, how it should happen, and which characters should be involved. Yeah, lovely ideas, and there are so many great books out there that give you awesome advice on how to be a great planner. I followed some of that advice. It started out great. Then I went off script in such a way that surprised even me. I'm not kidding. I did a thing and then sat back and went, "Woah, I did not see that coming."
I tried to see if I could get myself back on track, but it wasn't going to work without a massive rewrite, and since I'm not ready to openly weep at my computer for the next few days, I decided to keep going. I decided I would let the story happen and I was along for the ride just as much as my characters. I'll worry about weepy editing later.
This may be a bad way to go about things, but it's what I got at the moment, and it might work well. Anyway, my brain dump of a ramble is over. I'm going to face the dark internal void of my soul and glare at a mocking, unmoving cursor for awhile. There may even be some bad language.