And there are usually answers. For instance, maybe you didn't hydrate properly, you didn't get a good night's sleep, or both. Maybe you didn't use your preworkout today, so you don't have that NOS unit on your output. Maybe you're stressed, or distracted, or an old injury is flaring up, and working around all of that is causing you problems. Maybe you're coming down with a cold, or just getting over one. Whatever it is, though, there's usually factors involved if you take a moment and look. But the point is, at the end of the day, the best you can do on any given day is not always going to look like the best you can do on any other day.
Writing is the same way.
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| Some days you fly, and some days you swim. The key is not to drown. |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!
"Black Marks" On My Record
Regular readers of this blog have likely seen me talk about my daily output when it comes to fiction before, but for new folks, I try to shoot for 500 words a day whenever I'm working on any kind of novel or story. Some days I manage to do a little more than that because I really get rolling on an idea, and some days I just don't have the hours in the day to hammer away on a project because other things are a priority... but generally speaking, that's the output I shoot for.
For my short story Black Marks, though, I just couldn't make that happen.
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| And if you haven't checked it out yet, go give it a read! |
If you haven't come across this story before, it's a Dead Space fan story that I put together at the behest of Paul over on the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void (and you should subscribe to his channel to make sure you don't miss the upcoming audio version of this story). We follow an agent known as Lazarus as he's deployed to deal with the activities of a Unitologist Church who has begun to assemble too many of the shards, and it's on the verge of an event horizon if something isn't done to stop it.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how this story came out, and it seems to have been pretty popular as far as short stories I've posted to Vocal end up being. But the more I tried to push for 500 words a session on this thing, the harder and harder it was for me to hit that counter. Part of it was that I was working in a setting I wasn't that familiar with, so I had a lot of checking to do in between paragraphs to make sure I had all the right terms, descriptions, etc. in place. However, there was also the fact that I had so many other projects to work on, and so many other plates spinning, that it was just tough to find time to hammer away on this story.
However, reducing the word count I was working on to 250 meant that I could do things without too much strain and stress.
At the time, I felt really silly that this solution took me so long to come up with. And it was a little embarrassing that I couldn't keep up my regular word count. But at the end of the day it was better to have a regular, consistent word count, even if it was smaller than I'd liked. I didn't lose anything by going a little gentler on myself, and it still let me get the story done in an acceptable amount of time.
So I wanted to use this as a lesson for folks this week. If you're struggling with your word count, with the amount of time you can spend on a project, or any of the other aspect of the task, consider making it a little easier on yourself. There's no shame in lifting a little lighter, or doing fewer reps, or slackening your pace a little bit... especially if you're not on anyone's time table.
Regular, steady progress is better than jamming the pedal to the metal and overheating your engine. Remember that, and be kind to yourself.
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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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