Monday 13th April 2020

Number of words written last week: 5000 (weekly target min 5,000).  Yay!

This week’s target: min 5000. (safe)

Last week’s focus: write, write, write.

This week’s focus: write, make it real, make it more real.

I feel slightly jovial that I achieved this week’s target, espeically as I partially failed last week (see last week’s Monday Blog). I say ‘partially as when I wasn’t writing I was researching, which, is as important as the rest. 

I managed to address some tricky situations in the plot that were not coming to me initially, and slowly it’s taking shape.  I find it amazing how when a certain situation is created, it all leads quite simply to the next situation and then bang, I have a hook and a twist.  But this wouldn’t come unless I began in the first place.

The research came in handy too – I managed to create a couple more characters and bring them to life in a realistic situation.  But I still need to add some depth and make them even more real.  It’s one thing putting down some realistic stuff on paper, but it’s another thing all together to make the words lift off the page with life and vigour and hook the reader in so completely that enter another world – the character’s world.

Self-discipline is the only key to working towards these targets I am setting myself.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing, I love it – it’s the doing it properly, and well that counts, and this is hard work. Without self-discipline it would not happen at all and I wouldn’t be writing this blog either.  But this type of self-discipline doesn’t mean being hard on myself or restricting the things I enjoy in order to do it.  No, it simply means controlling my actions, and my reactions.  So, when I don’t feel like writing, I think of how good I will feel once I finish a certain chapter, or a certain amount of words.  Because then the story moves on into another exciting phase, and I want to get to that phase.  And, on top of that, I achieved the thing I set out to do. So I have found that if I persevere with my targets, in order to achieve the next one, and the next, it begins to manifest as at type of inner strength and more importantly, self-confidence, because only then I can think ‘I knew I could do it!’, or even ‘I can be good at this, if I work at it’, and this will lead to ‘I can be better’, and at that point hopefully I can produce some of my best work.

So instead of thinking ‘I can’t be bothered today’, I will train myself to think, ‘I want to get to the next phase today’, and then, simply, ‘When I do, I will feel good about it’.   It’s just a different way of looking at it.

My motivational quote for this week: GOOD, BETTER, BEST.  NEVER LET IT REST.  ‘TIL YOUR GOOD IS BETTER AND YOUR BETTER IS BEST (St Jerome.)

Happy writing everyone!