Habitual July: Day 2, aka "What the Hell Just Happened?"

I apologise to anyone who finds the above word offensive, if people in fact do. But that was a little bit how I felt after writing tonight. There were many times when I could have stopped.

I don't know if I can say I was enjoying it particularly, although it must have felt great to get that scene out of my head. I didn't really feel any emotional reaction as I was writing. I just kept going, because I knew there was a place I wanted to get to and I knew if I just write that bit more, that bit more, a little bit more, I could get to the end of this scene.

So I did.

There isn't a feeling I could associate with the process that occurred. It was nothing I wanted particularly much; I wasn't inspired; I hadn't given myself a deadline or a big goal to fill.

I think I've worked it out now. It was one of those scenes that I always knew would be in the book, one of those scenes that I always used as a "checkpoint" to keep me writing, to give me a foreseeable goal to write towards. Those scenes I think always have a tendency to just topple out of me.

But enough about that. Let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Yesterday I wrote 248 words. I said, "I don't expect that every day but it's a great start."

Today I wrote 711 words. When I finished I felt like saying something along the lines of awhapbopaloobalobawhapbamboom!

That's a GREAT start!

Well, I probably wasn't going to post a Habitual today, but just look at the shiny graph!

Click to enlarge. [Is there any better way?]

How could I help myself?

The important thing now is not to get slack just because I'm ahead. I have to focus on writing something every day -- and who knows when the next whopper could show up?

You can't usually pre-empt it, so give yourself the chance every day to write a whopper.

Now it's done, I can't imagine how things would have happened if I hadn't sat down to write at 9:00.

It should certainly be noted that I achieved all this in blocks. At first I only had 170 words. I then used Write or Die with an aim of a mere 30 words in 15 minutes to get me up to the more respectable 200 words. But by the time I was done with that my word count sat on somewhere over 300 words. Then I must have gotten profoundly lost in trying to work out how I was going to write each tiny part of the rest of the scene, because I have no idea where the last 400 words came from!

À l'écriture!
________________________

Tomorrow: Sample Sunday

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Welcome to The Dark Corner of the Mind. My name is Ryan Sullivan and my aim with this blog is to help others with their own writing, as well as to make note of some of my own writing endeavours.

Here at The Dark Corner, Real Life is both our best friend and our worst enemy. Look to him for inspiration, but don't let him get in the way too much.

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