Things I've Learned About My Writing Self

• I am in a much happier mood when I am writing consistantly. Last week I reached 10k on my WIP.  That was nothing short of a miracle for me. Even when my husband kept me up most of the night with his coughing from being sick, the next day he commented on what a great mood I was in considering my lack of sleep.

• Ear plugs! I've been using ear plugs for the past few months to help me sleep better. They're fantastic and I actually sleep deeply now (thanks to a low dose of melatonin, too). But the other day my husband was nice enough to take our four year old into the "movie theater" (basement) as my son calls it and play Guitar Hero with him. For some reason I like to sit at our dining room table to write, instead of my office two floors up. But the dining room is right above the movie theater. So I popped in my ear plugs and pumped our over four thousand words yesterday. When I have complete and utter silence, I crank it out.

• Outlines are my friend. I don't do extremely detailed ones, but I filled out ten scene cards so I have an idea of where I'm going. I'm not at all strict about sticking to the cards, but it gives me a little boost in the right direction. And if  anything changes as I write, well, I wrote the scene cards in pencil for a reason:)

• My fourth and final thing I've learned over the last week is to power through my story. I've always been the writer who goes over and over a sentence trying to make it perfect. I could have an hour to myself to write and I'd only get one paragraph done. It was a perfect paragraph, but still... . With my new wip I've been writing without going back over what I've written. This also means I don't want any feedback on it until I finish my first draft and go through at least one rewrite. I know it's mostly crap right now, but it's the really good kind of crap that has an actual plot!