i'm back

I have a habit of doing this. Creating a blog and then letting it go until I forgot where the blog was, what it was about and how to retrieve it.

Not this time. I wrote it down. On something permanent. Yep. I'm learning.

I had to post today, because I'm moving forward and I feel good about it. And well, I read that one of my gurus, Holly Lisle, says that creating a blog formalizes your goals and makes you more responsible for getting the things you want done. I'm hoping she's right.

I've got goals, but nothing specific as of yet. That will come as I see how this new system I'm implementing works. Today, it worked. And quite well, may I add.

Holly practices Ten Minute Magic. Which means she does almost everything in ten minute increments. What this does is break down big things into manageable and focused periods of time to move yourself forward on a project, or anything you'd like to complete.

Today I wanted to try this out. I had laundry to do, scheduling to input and writing to complete. So I set my nifty little computer timer to ten minutes and did the laundry until the timer went off, which was plenty of time actually to get the load folded and the next batch loaded into the washer. I set it again and did my scheduling. The timer went off and I was done with that. Then I gathered all my story notes, read through them and set up my computer to begin where I was next in the story. I set the timer. In ten minutes I had two paragraphs. Ok so it doesn't sound like a lot of words, but it's two paragraphs more than I had written in a month. Put that in your perspective and smoke it! I ended up setting the timer roughly 10 more times and got a couple loads of laundry finished and guess what?? 876 words written! If I can do this daily, I can get 22,776 words written by May 17, which is the next Cactus Rose meeting (my local chapter of the Romance Writers of America). I put a dollar into their goal journal, saying I would get 20,000 words written on my manuscript by the next meeting. More importantly this is another couple of steps to getting my novel finished. Hooray!

What I'm hoping will happen is that I'll get faster in my ten minutes and more prolific, getting more quantity as well as quality done. I won't get my hopes up. But I am a dreamer.

Anyway, I had to tell someone. And you're it.

Also, if you had a moment, check out Holly's site. She's got lots of cool things there in regards to writing...free plotting courses, helpful writing tips, great character, plotting, world building, etc. courses for a fantastic price and a newsletter that comes out every week detailing what she's working on and a section where she answers questions from people like me. I like her because she's a real person, making a decent living as a writer. www.hollylisle.com

Until next time...