Wednesday, May 9th

The Daily Report

Today's going to be a pivotal day in the annals of Getting Things Done while I'm in Hagerstown this time, as I need to finish and post the first chapter written while I'm here. It's ~1800 words of not great, not yet fully unified description and some dialogue. So it's by no means a done deal, though definitely within striking distance.

State of the Me

Sleep continues to improve. Upper respiratory health continues to be good.

Plans For Today

See above. Also have to go out shopping with Jack at some point.

EOD report!

So, after two days of ~1,000 words, I am pleased to report a ~3,500 word work day. And partially included in that is a surplus of words for the next chapter of Tales of MU, because I ended up splitting off some of what I'd written to save for later... after last chapter, I knew the next one should be slightly less eventful/dramatic, but my first attempt was just boring and too emotionally dead to follow on the heels of the confrontation. So I started rewriting and expanding...

You know, it's interesting to me to note how I often have really productive days when I've identified a problem with a chapter and am fixing it. It could be argued that it's a matter of necessity, thinking, "Okay, I have a thousand or two thousand words that don't work and I need to replace them!"... but I don't think that's it. I think it's that knowing a specific problem that needs fixing, it gives me a better target to aim for.

I think perhaps I should try to make this more a part of my actual formal process. Day 1 of the cycle is conceptual. I need to be thinking not just in terms of "what happens next" but "what is this chapter going to achieve" or "what does this chapter need to do" or "what kind of chapter do I need to go here". That's something I have thought about, in the course of things, but it's not something I always do think about, as a matter of routine.

Anyway, that's the score: 3,500 words. And 28 days of timely regular updates.