Things are looking up!

And I've been working on a new project. I'm keeping which one under wraps for a bit longer, but here's a hint to those who have been reading the blog for a while: it's the story of my heart. Okay, anyway, what I can say is that I'm tackling this story in a different way than I normally do. I'm approaching writing this book like it's my career. Because that's what I want it to be, after all, and why not treat it with the same respect as any other type of job?

I can't work a full day on my writing, I have too much going on, but I can push myself to work on it every day. Instead of saying "sit down from these hours to work on it as much as you can" I say "get this much writing done, no matter how long it takes" and that's been working for me pretty well. My goal is to have a complete complete version of the story (one I'd be happy to query an agent with) by the end of the year, which means writing 2.5k words a day. And, at least for the last two days, I've managed that without getting burned out.

Today, and the rest of the week, is going to be a test because I have to work. None of my shifts are longer than four hours this week so I'm hoping that helps keep my motivation going. It's nice to say "Can't sleep until this is done" but when I've actually had a full day that's a little harder to achieve. My fingers are crossed and my mind is set, so hopefully that is enough.

One thing I'm doing differently with this story, at least in this earliest draft, is that I'm not breaking it into chapters. I have breaks within the story, but I don't determine whether those are chapters or just regular breaks at this stage. I didn't really go into it thinking this was how I was going to do it, but it came naturally this way and there's no reason to cut it into chapters at this point so I'll keep going like this. I think either during the first editing phase, or during the second draft, I'll try to crack down on where I want the chapters to be, but I'm not too concerned.

Otherwise things have been going pretty well. I've had some dark days but I've also really worked on recovering from these in a healthy way and not letting it affect me for too long. Having a writing project helps in more ways than one, especially since it helps fill in extra time I normally have where I could feel lonely or sad.

Talk to you more about this project soon!