We Have Lift Off!

Ladies and gentlemen, my book officially has words written in it!  That means I am writing a book.  I’m no longer just planning a book, or talking about a book, or doing research for a book.  I.  Am.  Writing.  A.  Book.

Yesterday was day one of writing, and it did not go particularly well.  I sat through my Sanderson lecture, which was entertaining and informative like usual, and I had every intention of settling in for some hard-core writing as soon as it was over.

For a quick recap, the way the actual class is set up (with all the real people who take it) is a lecture followed by a workshop.  The workshop students are required to have 2000 words a week ready to submit to their writing groups.  Because of my schedule I’m watching one class every other week.  At the conclusion of the first episode he announced that no submissions were required for week two.  I took those two weeks to do some planning on what I want in the book, and how I want to approach it.  Now that lecture two is over, I’ll be aiming to get 2000 words written by the time I watch the next lecture. 

Well, yesterday I managed a measly 84 words.  There were lots of distractions going on with it being a holiday, but the main reason was just that I wasn’t sure how I wanted to get that first chapter moving.  I toyed around with a couple different intros and got some good notes down, but not much otherwise.

Today, I decided to jump right into it in the morning and see what happened.  The low word count on day one wasn’t ideal, but there was still a small victory in that there were actual words in the story now.  Plus, I reminded myself I needed 2000 by September 12, totally doable.

So I sat down today and was able to get things moving.  I’m now sitting at a nice 943 words.  I’m happy with that.  I’m almost half way to having my required word count for the next deadline, and I’ve got a pretty good idea where I want to go for the next couple chapters.  I’m hoping that as I get deeper and deeper into this story, the momentum can take over and I can have a couple nice marathon sessions where I can really go crazy.

I don’t foresee any problems easily reaching those 2000 words, and I hope to shoot right on past that mark.  However, if I manage to write 3000 words this time, it does not mean I’m only responsible to get 1000 the next couple weeks.  I’m still going to require myself to write 2000 words every session, averaging 1000 words a week.  If it gets to the point where I can easily bust out 2000 words a week, I’ll probably up my required word count for each session.

That said, I’m excited for the good start.