Writing Wednesday

As I drove home from dropping my kids at school this morning, I thought I'd make a new meme for myself called Writing Wednesday, where I could update on progress in my writing, share writing, tips, procrastinate from writing.... It is also the day my writing group, Some Good Karma and Some Bad Writing, meets so it seemed synchronistic.

Right now, I am actually involved in two projects, finishing up a novel that I started awhile ago and writing a collaborative novel with two others from my writer's group. My priority is finishing up my novel, Antigone: The True Story (my young adult mythological fiction). It's a book that I thought was finished, that I thought would be part of a trilogy, but that idea kept niggling at me. I decided what it actually needed was another part at the end, and for it to be a stand alone book.

I started writing the final section of the book in November after I finished my Nano novel, but had to stop when I gave myself tendonitis. Yuck! Yes, tendonitis from writing too much. I ended up taking a break from writing and going to physiotherapy for my arm. Things are feeling better now, so I'm back writing. However, I had lost the flow and voice of the book, so it was hard to get back into it. I also, honestly, wasn't sure how I wanted the book to end (and am still not positive - hopefully it reveals itself soon).

I was discussing this with a friend about two weeks ago, who also happens to be an amazing life and creativity coach, and she started to ask me questions. When did I want to finish? How many words did I think were left? What needed to happen? What if I gave myself permission to write absolute crap?

Something clicked in my brain. So, I thought I needed about 20,000 more words and I wanted it done by spring break (March 15). That gave me a month, 5000 words a week, which really shouldn't have been a problem after completing Nano in November. My friend upped the ante by offering to buy me lunch if I met my goal. Nothing like accountability and motivation!

I went back to my novel and read the last few chapters I wrote to get back into the voice, fussed around a bit (a lot), but did get some writing done. Not 5000 words a week though. Now it is a week and a half left to the deadline and I still have well over 10,000 words to write. We creative types sure like to go down to the wire with our deadlines, don't we?

On Monday, I decided to chunk it out and set a daily goal of 1500 words, which should get me to my goal on time. I'm using Scrivener, so I even figured out how to set daily writing targets. So far, so good.

And now, I'll even share a brief excerpt from what I wrote yesterday that I kind of liked:

“Can’t I? Why do you always have to make things so difficult? Why don’t you ever just do as you are told. No one will fault you for doing nothing this time. The heavens know that no one else would consider defying my father in this. None of those advisers can talk him out of this, no one will protect you from him.”
“I am not defying your father, but am following the gods.”

I would love to hear from other writers (or creatives) about their processes, writing, progress... What works for you? What do you do when you lose "the flow"? How do you stay accountable? Have you written something lately that you love? Feel free to put your links in the comments and I'll check them out.