Self-fulfilling prophecy? Or just a realistic expectation?
Today, the writing was like drawing water from a stone. The word count number isn’t horrid at 4224, but I didn’t manage to finish Chapter 8. It’s about half done, I think.
So what was the problem? Easy. I had no idea what the meat of these chapters would be. In my outline, each of the other chapters had a few sentences describing what would happen. For these four chapters (the two for today, and the two for tomorrow), I had two sentences that described all four chapters.
When that happens, my word count goes down as I have to stop every couple hundred words and figure out what happens next. It also means I get restless. I have to walk around and think. Of course, every time I left the room, my son would regale me with details of the game Terraria.
What does this mean for the 10 day deadline?
Hopefully, it won’t mean anything. I wrote a chapter and a half today. If I manage the same tomorrow, and then two a day from then on out, I’ll still finish within 10 days. But my buffer is gone. I hope I will pick up some speed when I get back to the detailed portion of the outline.
What if you made yourself a rule, you wouldn’t start a chapter until you had at least X sentences of description. If you woke up and found your outline for the day to be lacking, you could spend an hour doing that first.
I wish it could work like that, but for these chapters, but then I might spend all day figuring that stuff out and not get any writing done.