Writer's Accountability

I have a doctors note for the next two weeks! (actualy my first full marked assignment is due in two weeks and I shall be concentrating the full force (hehe)on it. but i'm available from the 28th
 
I'm leaving for a funeral tomorrow, but I will be game to start on Monday, and I plan to do some writing on the five-hour plane trip...a daily log sounds like a bit much, to me. I don't mind reporting weekly, though. Also, how about an ultimate, end goal? Finally submitting something sounds great!;)
 
I really don't think that a daily log is a lot of effort. I'm not saying post every day your work done, just keep it in a Word file somewhere, note how many words/pages you wrote in how much time, and then that's it. I wasn't thinking like detailing plot elements or character development in the log or anything, just like a list that looks something like this, for example:

Thu. 3-3-2005: Approx. 1000 Words, 4 hours.
Fri. 3-4-2005: Approx. 1500 Words, 4 hours, 30 min.

Etcetera, etcetera. And like I said, don't post these here daily, just put them up at the end of the week.

Making an ultimate end goal for everyone is going to be difficult. I think our community effort should focus on these general weekly goals, and each writer should set an end goal for him/herself. My ultimate end goal is to finish my novel. I'm sure not all of you out there are working on a novel at the moment. Or maybe you are, I don't know.

Also, I don't want to FORCE anyone to write anything they're unhappy with. If you end up working on an existing project and end up forcing yourself to write to meet the limit, but aren't really happy with the results, then maybe start a new piece or work on something else where you're more sure you're going the direction you want already. This doesn't have to all be on ONE project only.

Believe me, I've scrapped stuff before. I know how frustrating it can be. So, if you feel like this is a danger in this kind of thing, then I'd recommend not participating. But I personally need some more motivation in getting things done. I want to have my first novel finished and on bookshelves at some point, but I won't ever if I don't start giving it some more time.

Okay, keep working this out, then we'll start making things final on Sunday in preparation for our start on Monday! This ought to be interesting. I just graduated from college and have been sitting at home for the past 2 months with all of the free time in the world when a project like this would've been easy to keep up with, but I just got a job and I start THAT on Monday too. Now 8 hours of my day will be going to that. Heh, looks like I've got my evenings planned.
 
Finishing stories is my big problem because I have never ever produced a finished version of a story over a page or so long! Which is annoying because I would really like something done that I could send off to a publisher or anyone in the literary world to look at. Partly it is my fault for attempting a BIG project that I am in no rush to finish (it's been going for nearly ten years!) and not spending enough time on things I could finish.

So I've taken inspiration from http://www.nanowrimo.com/ and I'm going to write 50,000 words of a story that has been sitting around for a while. I've already written out the plot and the characters are sorted and it is just a matter of me writing it (plug: the story is called 'Plug in, Drop out' a sort of cyberpunky sf thing and the first chapter can be found by following the link in my signature).

Since the story plan is enough for a short novel, or roughly 50,000 words, I'm going to try and write that much this month! It breaks down to about 1,700 words a day or 12,500 words a week (which is my more achievable target since I work most weekdays and write at weekends). I know I can do this because others have and I can write at speed from my terrible attiutde to deadlines at uni and I've written 50,000 words before, just not in such a short time frame. So far it is going well and I've written nearly 5,000 words since the start of March :)

Anyway anything that will make me sit down and write and any encouragment is welcome and good luck to everyone else trying this!
 
I like Mark's suggested methods, but then they are similar to mine so its no big leap. I tend toward the habitual approach.

But really, it's ALL a habit, isn't it? I mean, the procrastination, mental road blocks, and excuses are just as habitual. Anything that can turn those habits around and into something more productive, exchange the habit of procrastinating with sitting down and writing, is worth doing. It may take several tries, and will be different solutions for different people, but the end goal is the same. You have to remove your excuses.

When I started my novel, I had just come off a job and had the whole day to write, but when I sat down to do it, I was distracted by everthing that needed to be done around the house too. If there were dishes in the sink, laundry piled up, the lawn unmowed, etc., it was distracting enough to keep me from focusing on the book. So after a time of struggling with it, I simply set aside a week and did all the other stuff: spring cleaned the house, tidied the yard, organized every drawer and bookshelf, etc. When I was all done, I sat down to write. Suddenly I could do it. For me, removing all those stupid little distractions actually worked. Those things were my excuse, so I removed the excuse.

I especially appreciate Mark's time at the desk target balancing the word target. I'm not as in love with word targets, especially daily ones. Longer term ones, okay, those work for me. You have to aim at something tangible. However, there are days when I write less but say more, and then there are days when I write a bunch of stuff that's crap and it simply gets tossed. I prefer more of the former than the latter.
 
When I write, i tend to spulurge all the words out in one sitting. As long as I usually get a minimum of 5-9,000 words a week. then with few charts and outlinesI have I stop and write a different thing completely. like from fantasy to a wierd comedy musical in my case. Then after thats done and some tv has been watched I start up again refreshed. Hope its helps!:)
 
Okay everyone. Here we go. It's Monday. I just got back from training for my new job, and it was mostly boring, and I'm tired. I'm probably not going to do too much writing today.

So, here's our goal for Monday. And, let's go by GMT for the sake of clarity, and say 5:00 AM GMT, making actually Tuesday in GMT. That makes it midnight in USA Eastern Standard time. I think that gives everyone enough info to determine what time they need.

So, Monday. Let's not set a daily word goal, and just go with 5000 words for this week. A goal that's reasonable and easy to reach, I think. For now, if you want to do a daily log like I outlined above, you can, but it's not required. I'm going to do it and post it at the end of the week.

Finally, if you're going to take part in this, please post a reply indicating that you are, so that we all know who we're holding accountable at the end of the week. I don't suppose that you HAVE to, but please do, out of courtesy so that we're not guessing who might be participating. If you post a reply at the end of the week indicating your progress, but don't reply to this message, that's not a big problem, but at least we know you're with us.

All right everyone, let's get crackin' and find out if this is of any value.
 
Damn!

I used to average 4000 words a day now I'm lucky if I manage 1000 with all the daily distractions of life.

I'm game, count me in!
 
Tsujigiri,

I'm going to wait until after this coming Monday to determine if anyone else was actually going to do this and just didn't reply, or if it is just you and me.

If it turns out to be just you and me, I suggest we handle it off of this board, and go over to AIM or E-mail or some similar method.

Anyone else who may be participating but didn't say if they were:

Please, post your reply at or around 0500 GMT, Tuesday March 15 (Monday, 12:00 AM EST).
We've got to be consistent on this or we'll get complacent really fast with putting off replies and work, and then the deadline flies out the window, and so does the whole point of this exercise.

Thanks guys!
 
I 'd like to join you, but due to work commitments it will be 1 April before I can commit to writing anything. I start my new writing circle then. Sorry.
 
I'll join in and post my word count as I go, might keep me motivated and on track (I'm aiming for a few more words than the weekly goal because I just want to get the story done). For information I'm a bit down on my word count this week; I should have done 12,500 words on Wednesday but I'm only on 11,500 today so I have some catching up to do! So I'll try to do as many words as I can between now and Tuesday.
 
Well, actually, we started on Monday. This week's goal is 5000 words by 0500 GMT Tuesday, March 15 (12:00 AM EST Monday, March 14). From that point begins another week with, for now, the same goal, another 5000 words by the next Tuesday, March 22, at 0500. So, since this week's deadline is close, you can wait to join us until after that deadline for the next week, if you want. If you want to try to pound out 5000 words before the deadline this week, then good luck. I don't have that kind of time. I still have 2000 or so words before I finish this week's goal.
 
I'm willing to join in beginning the new week tomorrow. I don't know if this will do the job, but I've been needing something to give me a push lately.
 
Alright, well, It's not yet midnight in EST or 0500 AM in GMT, but I'm logging in my progress now, because I've got a job that gets me up pretty early, and I want all of the sleep that I can get.

I didn't make this week's goal of 5000 words. I hit about 3700.

I didn't make it because I wasted my evenings with TV shows and my weekend with just being lazy.

I'll work to hit my 5000 goal this next week. It seems that this is when everyone is joining us anyway.
 
Um... This is for everyone who really cares...

This isn't going to work out for me right now. As I said before, I just started a new job, and it turns out this job isn't going to allow me too much free time. I start working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in 2 weeks, for at least a month. If 8 hour days now are tiring me out this much (I'm pretty sedentary otherwise) I won't have any energy for that month.

For those curious: I work in a nuclear power plant, and we're about to go into something called an outage. At this point, one of our two nuclear reactors is shut down and refueled with new uranium fuel bundles. During this time, everyone's work schedule is vamped up, because when the plant is shutdown, there's work that can be done on parts of the plant that can't be performed when it's running. Therefore, everyone works more.

I've already sucked at writing during this fairly calm week, so you can imagine what I'll be like later on.

I'll still do some writing, but I won't be able to keep up with these goals.
 
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