2 minutes
Writing
The writing has been going well most days, and I have managed to get to 800 easily daily bar yesterday and today. I discovered that in Scrivener, you can set not just a daily target, but a target for the entire document as well as a deadline. Then it will calculate how many words are needed per day to achieve target by deadline. And its dynamic – meaning the daily target changes depending on one’s productivity from the day before. My daily target is now 910 words.
The last two days have been harder to get volume. So far, I have been concentrating on getting all the words down and not thinking too much about much else. I have been worried about the need to structure, but spoke to Brian M and we both agreed that it was more important to get the words down. The structure will come eventually
And it did. At least I think so. There seems to be a suggestion of chapters based on certain themes that have come up. I decided to pull one of those themes out and write to that. The theme was name (part of which I posted yesterday).
Writing to that focus had slowed me down. What I had written till then was mostly descriptive – chunks of writing about specific incidents that had happened. To write a chapter, I need a thematic string that I can hang the chunks on. And importantly, to move beyond mere description and answer the ‘so what’ question.
For me, that is the key to good writing – the payoff for the reader. A bad writer thinks what they are saying is interesting, and important, while a good writer wants to reward the reader’s time and effort with an insight or appreciation that the reader thinks is important. And that is why the ‘so what’ question is so important.
‘I have read it, and now so what?’ – the reader asks. That is the question that must be answered.
Health
At times, it feels like two steps forward and one step back. If considered from when I got here 3 weeks ago, I am better. But it does not progress in a straight line, Thursday was a bad day. I sat almost continuously for 5 hours, and when I got up, my right leg was stiff. It meant that mobility was hampered again. It was not only affected me physically, but I tend to take it unnecessarily hard emotionally. On Friday, I made a point to spend a significant amount of time working standing up. When I stand, I tend to fidget and move around. It keeps my leg moving. I also have Timeout installed so that every 25 mins, I am reminded to have a walk around and do some stretching.
I have to keep reminding myself – it took me a while to get this immobile so it will take me a while to get mobile again.
Patience.