Okay. Well, hello. Rachael here.
Time for a confession. Know how much I wrote last week? When I had a goal of 3,000 words? Yeah, about a thousand.
And this week, so far, is about another thousand. I know I still have two days till the end of the week and can possibly get it done, but there’s a part of me that is saying, START ON APRIL FIRST!
I love real, concrete start dates that make sense. Nice round numbers like the first of something.
Then I could just chalk up these slow weeks to a warming up. The training runs of writing, you might say. I’m just getting back IN to the swing of things. Right?
I am also very aware that it is a cop-out. Therefore I am confessing right here and now that YES, the part of me wanting to start on April first JUST won, and that’s what I’ll be doing. I mean, I’ve been working so hard trying to finish up the 100 mile challenge by April 1st, and I’ll be starting that again, and doesn’t it make sense to start with a bang? On my first anniversary? Yeah!
But I’ll still be writing. Maybe a thousand words next week, as I gear back up. And of course, I can go over that, which I like to tell myself I’ll do.
Is this like saying I’ll start my diet on Monday? Kind of, right? I know it is. But with you to hold me accountable, I’ll dabble my toes right now and jump in with both feet on the first of April. (It’s a get-out-of-jail free card for you, too, iffen you want it….)
But thanks for being here! I’m so excited about this, and I get all happy whenever anyone posts anything…..
Yay!
Rachael.
yay! i’m not the only one thinking that i’ll *really* start on april 1… tee hee…
Rachael-My kids were on spring break last week and this past week has been a big old goose egg as far as words are concerned so April 1st looks like a good start date for me too! I know that I have to get disciplined about my writing, I have an Oct. 1st due date for a manuscript so I need to get the words moving across the page instead of just floating around my brain where they don’t do me much good.
Congratulations on not just feeling bad about not writing, but instead coming up with a plan that actually makes sense. April 1 has a lovely sound to it.
I just wrote my first 213 words (and yes, I’m doing a word count about every 45 seconds)–all that my body and mind could handle today, but so much more than I’ve done in months. I love having this site to come to–it makes the whole process so much less solitary. So thank you, Rachel, for getting us all moving.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with planning to start a diet on Monday.
It’s when you plan to start a diet every Monday that you run into trouble.
April 1st is sounding pretty fabulous to me! I wrote a bit over 1,000 words right when I signed up, and have a total of under 2,000 now. Crazy, crazt times right now. I am going to attempt to write some before then, but may “re-start,” officially with you on the 1st.
Also, I am getting all warm and fuzzy thinking about April 1st. Last year it was good times, eh?
Love ya, and we’ll be writing up a storm, come April.
Oh, thank goodness, it’s not just me. I was jumping on my guilt bandwagon (I drive it myself!) thinking why did you make Rachael respond to your email and help you get set up as an author if you’re not even going to take advantage. And then there was the more generalized self-flaggelation: you know you should do this, why can’t you do this? That kind of fun talk which really gets me inspired, you know?
Anyhoo, fresh starts are great. April 1 is not only an honored day of foolery in my house but also was my beloved grandfather’s birthday – a fact that we never tired of making jokes about to him. He was a guy who never wrote a word as he worked as a cop and housepainter but he DID read all of Dickens’ works. And so, I’ll think of Pop, as we knew him, and write a few words for him on the 1st.
Sounds like a good plan to me! (And not just because I only managed 900 words last week – the weather suddenly turned nice, I wanted to be outside.) Maybe by then I’ll figure out what to do for the challenge (see recent post).
The hard-headed pragmatist in me says I should go with three 10,000-word short story rough drafts. The chicken in me says NO THAT IS TOO MANY STORIES TO INVENT! But a project like this, it’s all about getting the chicken to shut up, right?