At the beginning of December, I shared a post about clearing my schedule to write. I really only wrote for a week and a half before I had to back up and make changes to my schedule to best suit the things currently on my plate.
The good news is I learned that doing nothing but writing is pretty productive. (Wow, who would have thought?)
But it also came with some challenges I didn’t anticipate–like how difficult it would be to concentrate with a little one wanting Mama every fifteen minutes during winter break, and more importantly, how not physically acclimated I am to doing that much writing in a short period of time.
I ultimately wrote almost 40,000 words in the span of 9 days, at which point the muscles in my neck and shoulders decided they’d had enough, and I needed to stop. I still haven’t gotten back to it, but I’m reevaluating some of my plans for when I hop back in and finish Paragon of Fire. I still have my fat buffer for YouTube stuff, so January will be spent getting some other big things off my plate. Then in February I can finish the rest of the book, hopefully fast, since writing that much in a short span of time taught me a lot about my creative process, too.
Aside from needing to find stretches that work well for mitigating the way my neck and shoulders bunch up when I’m using a computer, it went well, and I didn’t have any problem with my wrists or hands, which is a huge relief considering the creative nature of all my work relies so heavily on it.
I also talked out a schedule with my editor, and not having the whole book done right this instant isn’t likely to keep the book from going out in April. I’m a chronological writer, and the stuff in the early part of the book won’t be touched again before edits, so she can get started before the book’s complete. Hopefully, the changes I make to my schedule for this year both lighten my workload and help me learn to write faster.
Over Christmas, I had another idea for a series I’d like to write, so counting Spectrum, I’ve got six series to finish now…