Not letting a crack turn into a ravine

Over the past few days I have been more busy than I had planned and missed my goal of writing on my book for a couple of days. In the past this would have made me loose focus and/or faith in writing this book and I would have tried to have shifted to the next. But I have learned since then not to worry so much, even if I think everything I am writing is terrible.

I like to research things I am interested in doing and writing has been no exception. I have combed through the internet to glean some knowledge about the subject and have learned two very important things: you should write daily if you are serious about writing and never worry if your first draft is terrible, because you will re-write it.

Though I did miss two days on writing on my story I did write for the two blogs that I keep about some of my other interests. In fact I cannot remember a day that has ever gone by where I have not written anything. But I do know the only way to get the book I am writing done means I need to treat it on the same level as my blogs: this means writing for it daily.

I can already see parts of my first draft that need to be re-written. A part of me wants to stop and do it immediately, but I know I will never get anywhere if I do so. Instead I force myself to slug on so I can get this draft done. It is better to know where things will end up going before rewriting than otherwise.

This also helps prevent the dreaded writer's block, as if all you care about is putting words on a page rather than fretting if they are any good then you will get somewhere. And the great thing about writing is that it is up to you if you want to share it, so if it is dreadful you can hide it away from others' eyes until you have made it less so.

Keeping these things in mind the writing process becomes much easier.

And I better get back to writing that book now.

Excel to Self-Motivate

One of the issues I have with writing is that I will make a start on something but then get distracted by an idea and leave what I was working on to move onto that new idea. One thing that has been able to keep me on track the few times I have finished something has been keeping daily stats of my progress.

Since I have recently taken a class on Microsoft Excel I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by using the program to not only keep stats to keep me on track but to also help reinforce some of the things I have learned to do with the program.

As I only began writing daily for this first project yesterday the stats are not much to look at, but every time I get to change them makes me happy to see numbers increase. I may not be very good at math but seeing numbers get bigger and knowing it means something positive is not that difficult to follow.

Perhaps when I have finished the first draft I will post the full sheet for my progress for this, but until then I need to go back to writing so I can have some better numbers to show for that.

Typical First Post

In an attempt to get more serious about my writing I decided to open this blog for it so I have something tied to my name as an author.

This blog will be updated from time to time about various topics about my progress in writing. I do have the goal to have something completed this year, which means having the first draft done and rewritten/edited a few times over so I feel confident in having strangers read it. So it will mostly be about that story and my writing process for it.