June 14 (Day 10) through June 21 (Day 17)

Bad rabbit. No writey for many days.

The point of this exercise is to train for NaNo--not to have a perfect score of practice days beforehand. Our difficulty in diligently writing every day is WHY we're doing this blog--messing up just proves our point that we need the practice. So blowing it for a week doesn't mean we failed the task and can now stop trying. It means we're going to have to keep pushing to get more consistent.

Or in other words . . . second verse, same as the first.

June 13 (Day 9)

The writing went okay today. I continued working on "Six Ways to Kill a Man Before Breakfast," and made up the day's quota and my bye day word count. So yay for that.

June 12 (Day 8)

Doh! I ended up having to use my bye today, on the first day of the week. Sigh. This does not bode well for my success this week.

The tomatoes are coming! Run!

June 11 (Day 7)

Whew, first rest day. It was nice to have a day where I didn't worry about writing at all. Instead, I watched a lot of crappy television on HGTV and read Part 1 of the Forsyte Saga. Good times.

June 10 (Day 6)

I had a great writing day today. I didn't feel like working on the same short story I've been focusing on, so I glanced through my other stories in progress. I found a story I worked on ages ago, and it was mostly complete. Adding in the missing pieces easily ate up my quota for the day.

I can just hear you wondering (ChiHeather) how this will help with NaNo, since NaNo requires us to sustain our word count on one project. But I think it can't hurt to start by simply trying to make it a habit to sit down to write every day. Besides, we don't want to get so strict that we're burned out by the time NaNo rolls around. That's what I'll claim if anybody asks anyway.

Till tomorrow.

June 9 (Day 5)

So far, so good. I'm over 300 words into a story about Aunt Peggy -- a woman who continually manages to get involved in absurd things.

I need another 100 words to make up my "bye" from yesterday. Here's hoping something crazy and word-consuming happens to Aunt Peggy soon.

And . . . done. Thank you Aunt Peggy.

June 8 (Day 4)

I had to use my bye day today. I was down with some kind of stomach bug or something. I'll skip the gory details.

Onward

June 7 (Day 3)

Done.

I sure hope this gets easier. I eked out my 200 words adding part of a scene to my 2009 NaNo novel. But forcing myself to write something new (as opposed to tinkering with what I've already written) was challenging.

Anybody else feel like they have to tap a vein to get words down on the page?

June 6 (Day 2)

Whew, well that was a close one. I thought I might need my pass on the second day of training. But I finally managed to turn off Doctor Who and get a few hundred words in just under the wire.

Good call ChiHeather on starting with 200 words instead of 500. 200 was the perfect amount -- attainable, but requiring more than adding a sentence to an existing paragraph. I can see that even small goals are going to be a challenge to hit with consistency.

Hopefully by the time NaNo rolls around we'll be so buff from training that we can press out 1300 words without blinking. Um . . . I'm definitely not there yet, but Day 2 goal is achieved.

Till tomorrow.

June 6- (200 words/10 minutes)

Haven't even started yet...

June 5- (200 words/10 minutes)

The start of a plan!

chiheatherlove- done with mine, but the all day write-a-thon helped! Thanks Borders in Oak Park!