Introduction

Well, apparently I’m now writing a blog and have decided to start using these warm-ups as aforementioned blog. Why? Well, because they were starting to sound like a blog and were basically rants in which I rambled for ten minutes at a time about my writing and how my currents projects were going (quite well.). I was still debating it in my head as early as yesterday, and the agonizing decision came down to…’Sure, why not?’.

So – let’s give an introduction to potential readers. Not that I imagine there will be very many people interesting in the ravings of an Oklahoman who keeps going on and on about my writing. A couple of months ago, I decided to improve my writing skills by forcing myself to write every day. The initial goal was five minutes for a warm-up, where I would write whatever I wanted to, as an effort to craft new ideas and concepts for upcoming stories I would write and then a minimum twenty minutes a day on a ‘main’ project (typically a novel I’ve been working on. Some of these projects I’ve had in mind since I was twelve or thirteen) and still am interested in doing something with them. 

My biggest problem was – is – lack of focus whenever it came to writing. I couldn’t work on a project for longer than a minute or so before getting on the Internet. So I added free timer software to my computer, and forced myself to write, counting it down. So I wouldn’t be tempted to stop writing and look at how much time was left, I added icons that displayed the time on the desktop – now, I could see how much I had to go without actually stopping writing. 

And the experiment worked. Since I started doing this (beginning the 23^rd of April), I’ve gradually increased the time on the timers – from five to ten minutes for the warm-up – or blog post now, I guess, to thirty minutes on the main project. I’m forcing myself to put in a full hour minimum on the main project as of now – two thirty minute blocks of time. They can be either back to back or at two different points during the day. But they have to be done.

At some time in May, I decided to start keeping track of my daily word count and time I spent writing – sort of a way to keep myself accountable. That’s proven effective to. Once I’ve passed a full year of writing, I plan on making a graph to see how much progress I’ve made on terms of stamina. And so far, it’s worked out quite well. The only day I’ve missed since I started this little experiment is the day of the tornadoes.

Focus is one of my two biggest worries at the moment. Like I said earlier, I had, shall we say, issues with focusing on writing at all. Now I find myself bouncing back and forth between different projects like a pinball – I’ll work on one for a day or so, then start thinking of another and an interesting idea I can use for that, so I switch gears to that project – rinse and repeat. I –may have that beat, though. I have a project I’m working on that I’m quite happy with. Procrastination is my other worry – I tend to put off writing till the evenings (with the exception of these blogging warm-ups.), but I do eventually get to it.

I need to pick a time and make a habit out of it – I handle these warm-ups usually shortly after I roll out of bed, and that’s rapidly becoming a habit. But still, I’m not resting on my laurels just yet. There’s still a ways to go. My current goal is actually finish a manuscript, so hopefully I’ll get something done. 

A final note: these blog entries should be daily, since I’m basically copy-pasting my warm-up writings from Word (which, as I said, had pretty much turned into a blog instead of snatches of story, description). Basically, a lot of these entries will be me rambling about writing and now and again, I’m going to have actual stories that I wrote for the warm-ups especially if I don’t have anything to say about how the writing is going.

That is all. Thanks for reading.