I like to create and work to structures and so creating the writing blocks has helped me with keeping on track and managing my time and objectives. I try to leave them somewhat loose and ensure the goals are realistic so that I won’t get discouraged as, despite my love for structure, I can often overwhelm myself with my ambition and the structure begins to feel like posts of failure rather than success. I’ve linked to my guides before: Editary Done: Rini & Butler V.6.

Preptober: Preparation in October/April

The entire purpose of Preptober is to prepare for writing the novel in November/May. During this period, I split the time up into focus periods. The first week is about preparing everything that I can, making lists and doing storms to get a handle on everything I want to do through Preptober.

Week 2 is the “Power Week for Structure” and is when I focus on the plot structure. I almost always work in arcs because it helps me visualise the structure of the story a lot easier. I use the plot structure table in Scrivener and the scene folder idea from Heart Breathings to lay out the timeline of the story and see what the pacing will look like. When I have those dot points I want to hit, it makes it easier to build the flesh in between. I can see “A-to-B”.

Writvember: Writing in November/May

The single goal for Writvember is to write the novel. I want a complete draft of the novel.

Using the Preptober work, I fill out the wordcount expectations in a calendar to make sure I can visualise my progress and set out as realistic as goals as I can.

I’m pretty fortunate that I can pump out a lot of writing when I have to. I don’t always have the focus or the motivation but I’ve achieved 14,000 words in one day before and so I don’t doubt that I can grind out the words when needed. If I make it an event with a targets and a visual measure, I write like never before. This allows me to set my expectations for wordcounts a little higher, but where I mess up is not properly considering life happening around me and how it might impact my writing time or headspace.

For first drafts, I typically aim for around 50-60,000 words. It seems to be a sweet spot to get a full story out that still has space for improvement. I prefer to aim for 60,000 because I like the way I can split up the time. This means that, based on an average of 25 days (making considerations for days I might not be able to commit to writing), I need to write about 2,400 words a day.

I’m also helped out by the fact that I do 90% of my writing in 4theWords, which actively scratches the gaming itch and rewards me for getting the words in. Some nights the “one last game” converts into “one last monster” and that can mean another 250 words that I thought I didn’t have.

Prepuary: Preparation in January/July

The purpose of Prepuary is to perform a quick skim through the manuscript to highlight glaring issues and pinpoint places that need more scrutiny than others for the finer edit. I want to pull out inconsistencies or new/improved ideas so that when I do the finer edit, I’m already thinking of these things.

Editary: Editing in February/August

The reason I’ve included an editing block is to clean up the first draft for beta readers. I’m notorious for never releasing my work to be read but I’m working on that! In fact, all three of my reader copies for Rini & Butler have been handed out (๑>ᴗ<๑). I don’t if the first draft is really supposed to be handed to beta readers but the more I make something an “event”, the more I have fun with it and work to a date. Otherwise it might take a year for me to remember the draft and another year to edit it.

Making Adjustments for the New Block

After my first round of writing blocks, I’ve started working on some adjustments. Prepuary doesn’t need to be an entire month and so I’m look at reducing it to the first two weeks of January and moving the next two weeks into Editary so there are six weeks to edit with.

Based on a recent Heart Breathings’ writing challenge video, I’ve been given some additional ideas about how to plan out my writing blocks. I am not the best at writing in sprints but they are good for me because I get easily distracted. What I haven’t considered is how many words I write per sprint and so how many sprints I would need to do to reach my daily target. My current pomodoro setup is 20mins > 5mins break > repeat 3 times > 30mins break.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to start testing to see how many words I can write in a 20 minute session so that I get an idea of how many sprints I would need to complete each day. The more bite-sized targets there are, the more I get excited about hitting them. It’s a way to get those little shots of dopamine in and keep me moving on to the next one. 

I currently measure my Pomodoros with punch cards, 24 punches to a card for a reward. I’ll be working on a Writvember card set for this based on either the days or the weeks. The one issue that I think I’ll find with measuring my writing is finding a good average. I might need to look into how other people have figured out their sprint writing average. It’s one thing for me to churn out words that I’m writing against a guide and another to be writing without any guide at all. Perhaps I’ll need to find the average out in the first week of Writvember. Or during the first writing period during my serial planner.

I can’t really use the Rini & Butler Writvember because I had a lot of foundation to work off of. For that writing block, I was writing 2,400 words on average. I slacked off during the middle but made up with the writing retreat, writing the last 20,000 words over that weekend. And most of that was all new material so I’m actually more impressed with it now than I was then. This coming Writvember, I won’t be able to slack off. I have the first week of May off, however, and so I’m planning to do another writing retreat over the course of that time to get a good start on the draft.