{"id":8079,"date":"2021-06-07T05:27:05","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T10:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=8079"},"modified":"2021-06-07T05:27:06","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T10:27:06","slug":"one-week-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2021\/06\/07\/one-week-in\/","title":{"rendered":"One Week In…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I mentioned last week<\/a> that I’m taking part in the 1000 Words of Summer writing challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So…how did the first week go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Week One<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I wrote 5,315 words in the first week. (Some years I blow past daily word counts, and other years I don’t even hit 3,000.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A friend<\/a> is curious about how the challenge works for me this year, so here’s a breakdown:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hit the 1000-word target on four out of seven days. My best day was 1,665 words, and my worst was zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not surprised about hitting four out of seven days because my writing goal is often to write more days than not in a week. With a job, life, and other things going on, it’s a good thing to shoot for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday and Saturday saw no writing at all, and I don’t feel bad about that. Friday was spent putting a personal podcast together, and Saturday I spent the day hanging out with my wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Podcast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The podcast is writing related, and I spent more time early Friday morning, during lunch, and after work assembling a series of recordings I started making as I neared the completion of a readable draft of the last novel. The reason: if<\/em> the book resulted in representation for me, I wanted to start a podcast about the entire process from a book being accepted by an agent to [hopefully] publication…and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several other podcasts chronicling the process out there, but they all seem to stop once the author releases a book. I wanted something that kept going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, I put together years of short audio diaries into one big file and listened to it with my wife on Friday. (I put more time into the recording than I would have put into writing, which leads me to sharing what I already know…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing is More Than Writing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More than ever, writers are expected to come with a built-in audience; they’re supposed to be on social media, blog, record audio and video…just so much more than simply writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day I spent putting together the recordings I mentioned would have likely resulted in my most productive writing day had I put in the same amount of time to piling up words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a 750-word blog on Wednesday, and the following day, the last episode of the recordings I mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, I thought about writing a blog about the recordings, but it would have required time finding good quotes to complement the points I want to make. That would have taken away from actual writing time. (Yesterday was a 1,049-word day.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I Know about My Process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have never professed to be a fast writer. Dyslexia (and other challenges) make writing a slow process for me. So…I would much rather get 250 – 500 good words down in a day (and even spend the rest of the day reworking those words when I have time, here and there), than sitting down and vomiting a massive word count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve written about this before, how I’m not as much of a fan about writing that’s like being on a roller coaster<\/a> as I am writing that takes its time. I lost a friendship over this, having known someone who was unrelenting in his criticism of “slow writers” and people seeking means of publication other than self-publishing multiple e-books a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I know I’m a good writer. Maybe not the most prolific, but it seems when you can’t write well, perhaps you write a lot. (And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless — ya know — you’re an asshole about it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many days, I knock out my 500 good words and then write 500 – 1,500 words here on The Juggling Writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some days I knock out my 500 words and record podcasts…or spend time doing other things in the hope people see what I’m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not enough to quietly toil away on a handful of words and wander the countryside thinking. That would be great, but today — in two hours — I log into my day job at 7:00 a.m. and only get a break during lunch until the workday ends. Then it’s time spent hanging out with my wife, dinner, and relaxing. (Okay, and tonight is also Among Us<\/a> night with friends!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re all doing enough to write at all, and while I like this annual challenge, it’s not about the word count for me, but looking at what I do a bit closer than I might on other busy days…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you want to know the gist of the roller coaster analogy without jumping to that entry, it’s that there’s nothing wrong with writing stories that feel like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Roller<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But I’d rather write and read stories that feel like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Boulders<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned last week that I’m taking part in the 1000 Words of Summer writing challenge. So…how did the first week go? Week One I wrote 5,315 words in the first week. (Some years I blow past daily word counts, and other years I don’t even hit 3,000.) A friend is curious about how the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8079"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8082,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions\/8082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}