Day five is upon me, and so far I haven't broken the streak -- 1000 words a day is remarkably easy. I know they say everybody has to find their speed and only then will they know what to expect; NaNoWriMo's 1667-words-a-day standard seemed a good guideline for other parts of the year, but I've found since I began writing Epoch that 1000 words flies by like a breath, and 1667 feels like a million years. There's a tipping point, and I've found mine. This is great news. It means I stop when I reach it, it feels effortless, it feels great when I finish and I always leave something to come back to tomorrow.

I was skeptical about the writing advice, "stop when you know what comes next" -- it doesn't refer to the avoidance of a good outline, but I had found in the past that if I gave in to my desire to binge one day, the next day I came back to a blank page that stayed blank, often indefinitely.

The big thing about only writing 1000 words a day is that I have the entire rest of the day -- a good 15 hours of wakefulness -- to have ideas float into my brain. Most of the time, the story really does have to "marinate" for you to figure out what you want to do. You have to give yourself the time to let those things come naturally. If I had sat down and tried to write 5000 words the first day, I worry I wouldn't have had so many scenes/characters/plot points ready and waiting. I would have gotten myself stuck. I realize now that it's actually very important for me to only write so much per day, because when I come back the next day, I have given myself a chance to "figure out" things that wouldn't have come to me if I had tried to force them.

I am doing everything differently, this time around, and so far it is working really, really well. I don't have a hard outline, yet this time I know the entire story start to finish. I barely plan ahead, but just write chapter to chapter and scene to scene, in chronological order, only setting myself up with a little prompt for the next day. I am refusing to spend more than a few seconds on editing, and only browse a little at the end of the session for a few minor touchups (but I'm trying to avoid that, too). It's very liberating.

I could easily see, in the future, bumping it up to two 1000-word sessions per day, spaced well apart, so long as there is time enough for ideas to pop up in between, and not leave me stuck the next day with nothing to write.

So now, I write until I hit the 1000 word mark and if I know what I want to do next, I write a brief synopsis of how the scene will continue (if it's not done, which actually isn't often) or what the next scene will be, and then I leave it there for tomorrow. Any ideas, naturally, get compiled in the Evernote folder where I stash all the details, but I will not give in to the desire to write a scene ahead of time. I used to do it in the past, and it gave me some great one-offs, but I have realized that letting myself do that means I end up looking at filling in the gaps as some kind of chore. You don't want to give in to all the best parts first. Leave them there for Future You to write, look forward to them as a reward, and writing the rest doesn't feel like a chore at all.

I also went out and found a few collections of music and ambient sounds -- including music on the guqin, a 7-string Chinese zither, Tibetan bowl meditation, and others. It isn't that it fits this story to a T, necessarily (though meditative music fits Lux's environment, I don't picture this fantasy setting particularly rich in Asian influences beyond the obvious allusions to Japanese RPG tropes), but it definitely helps settle my mind and gets things moving.

Obviously, I will need proofreaders. Thankfully, this is essentially a novella -- it'll be fairly short, at least in the first draft. I want to keep it simple, easy to digest. I know these days a lot of us don't have time to get terribly invested in something we're taking a first chance on. I'm totally one of those people. But when the time comes, hopefully a handful of 10-15 people will be willing to hack the hell out of it and give me their input, one person at a time, until I'm ready for an editor or whatever comes next.

My plan is to release it for free in PDF format but also put it on Amazon or anywhere else that sells e-books, for $0.99. People can read it, for free, instead of taking a chance on it; then, if they like it, they can "donate" by buying the digital copy and ensure that I write again. A lot of authors I admire are doing this now, and I think it's a great business model.

So that's that. Today, however, is art day. Well. After I get my 1000 words written. :) Yesterday I got up at 4:30 AM, planned to write. Didn't. By 9:00 AM I felt bad, and by 2 PM I felt horrible. By 6 PM I felt way too tired to even get up and walk around, so I realized I would have to break my streak and write two times the words the next day, but at 7:30 PM inspiration struck and I pecked out those 1000 words easily. It felt really good.

So. Whether or not I am about to leave this journal and go write those 1000 words immediately after, I don't know. But I'll get it done at some point today, and tomorrow, after the next 1000 words, I'll publish days 4-6 of the writing in my scraps. :)

Hope everyone is enjoying the day. It's finally raining here. Everything is dark and quiet and misty. If this isn't great writing weather, I don't know what is. <3 Rain + coffee + zither music + christmas lights in a dark office = pretty much can't give me a better comfort environment unless you filled my office with puppies. It's so great I even started knitting something. Sure, it'll take me 8 hours compared to the creator's 1.5, but I'll never get better unless I try. A little each day and it'll be done in a month. LOL. See you~

-HD