Time Management Tuesday: Obsessing Is A Time Suck

Let's see, one change I've been working on this past month (May Days!) to increase my word count is to pay attention to scenes. I'm planning them ahead of time, structuring them, and confining material to a limited number of scenes in a chapter instead of meandering here and there. I think it's making a difference.

You know what else is making a difference with word count? I think? Not obsessing on making everything perfect before I move on. I can lose forty minutes or much, much more fixating on getting every word right because each paragraph is a foundation for the next paragraph, and I need a good foundation! Then I might come up with something while working on chapter nine that means changes in seven and eight and maybe I need to have one character own a smartphone, so I have to go back and do that.

This kind of thing sucks up time, big time and keeps me from generating new work.

This past week I've been able to make notes about how I want to change a paragraph when I can't get there immediately. Then I jump it and move on. That business about coming up with something in chapter nine that requires changes in chapters seven and eight? That was real. I opened those earlier chapters and left instructions for myself.

And then I moved on.

Now, I won't know how well this works until I get to the end of the road and start the next draft. But for now, I am piling up words.

But nothing like the 10,000 words a day I was shooting for.