Time Management Tuesday: I See An Improvement In Writing Speed

So you'll recall that I'm working on a manuscript as part of my May Days effort and experimenting with upping my daily word count. That's doing more with the time you have, folks. When I was finally able to get started on my project, I was getting numbers like 534 and 209 a day. Yeah. I actually went down. I don't know what happened the third day. I forgot to record my numbers.

But yesterday I went up to 1,400 words and today to 1,800. That's not the 10,000 words Rachel Aaron talks about in the book I read to prep for this month. I haven't even gotten to the 2,000 words that was her starting point when she started pumping up her own word count. But what a jump for me.

This week's improvement was due, I think, to Aaron's contention that knowing what you're going to write is necessary for a good word count. I was able to do a lot of planning for the last two day's work. I've got plans for the next chapter, too. After that I don't know.  

I've had times when I've been able to get the word count up before. When it has happened, I think it was due to my being able to immerse myself in a project and stay there. Staying in a project, in my experience, is the best way to come up with those plans that allow you to know what you're going to write. The more you work on something, the more you're able to work.

I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I have a speaking engagement next month that I really ought to start preparing for. It takes me forever to do that sort of thing. Working on that will keep me from the immersion I seem to need to develop some work speed. The good news is that I picked up something from Aaron's book that I think is helping me and might offset a little appearance preparation time.

Next week: scenes and chapters.