Project WtFS

I thought today I'd give an update on how my new "write the fucking sentence" approach is going. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and read Sage Wisdom.

When I first approached the idea it was with the expectation that it would take a few weeks to see results. As I mentioned in the earlier post, I've written at the same sluggish pace for over a decade. (I won't say how far past a decade. A girl has to have some secrets.) A habit that long standing should be a difficult one to break. However, I wasn't going to let that deter me because even if I failed, I wouldn't be writing any slower than before.

Guess what? I saw immediate results. On my first try I wrote an additional hundred words per hour. PER HOUR!

So, how did I do it? If I noticed that I had spent more than a minute mulling over how to word a sentence, I replayed Lee's wise words in my mind, and wrote the sentence. I know. It was all so simple I wanted to bang my head against the wall. If the nearest wall wasn't rough stucco, I would have. (Seriously, have you ever banged your head against stucco? It freaking hurts!) When I looked at the numbers after that first session I felt like such an idiot for crippling myself with indecision for so long. Yet at the same time, I was so happy to be past the block that it didn't matter.

Some of you might be saying that it was just one experience and that it might not last. Well, I've followed this philosophy during every writing session for the last two weeks and I've seen the same results. Heck, last Friday I wrote 1K in a little over three hours! It used to take me all day to get that kind of word count. This new pace has opened up all sorts of possibilities for me. I can write more in a year, I can actually do some housework (a weird thing to be excited for, but there you have it), and I can take time off for a con or two and not feel guilty. But this new freedom isn't the best part. What astounded me the most was that the words I threw on the page, weren't that bad. They were actually better than I had expected to see when I first considered this. Who knew?

So with absolutely no regret, I can say that from now on, that sound bite of Lee will be echoing in my mind while I write from here on out.