Happy Halloween!
It's the last day of October, and I just got back from a brisk 5 a.m. walk with the dog. That's been my usual morning routing since we moved in to the new place a little over a month ago, though it hasn't always been that early. I've been slowly getting used to waking up earlier, and I'm finally just about where I want to be, which is up at 4:30 a.m. and back to the writing desk, butt in seat, by 5 a.m. I'm planning on taking advantage of tonight's clock roll back to get me there. That extra hour should make tomorrow's wakeup a lot easier.
It helps that I've committed to getting to bed by around nine every night. I've shifted my whole schedule earlier slowly to accommodate the earlier wake up and bed times, and I think I'm ready to make the full adjustment. I know it won't be perfect, but I'm going to do my best to stick to the following schedule for November:
4:30 a.m. - Wakeup
4:35-5:00 - Walk the Dog
5:00-7:00 - Writing
7:00-7:30 - Exercise
7:30-8:00 - Breakfast
8:00-8:30 - Get ready for work
8:30 a.m. -6:00 p.m. - Work
6:00-8:00 - Dinner and relax
8:00-8:45 - Blog
8:45-9:00 - Walk the dog
9:00 p.m. - Bed time
The work schedule is typically going to be Monday - Saturday, Saturday's hours are flexible depending on our weekend plans. If we are doing something that prevents me from working Saturday at all, I'll likely stay out later each week night and cut into the relax time. In any case, I'll never work past 8 p.m. because that will sabotage my getting to bed on time, which is crucial to the whole thing working long term.
Sundays, replace the work time with whatever we do with out day. I'll also try to get some extra writing in every Sunday. Two hours a day times seven days is fourteen hours, so if I get at least an extra hour in every Sunday, that's at least 15 hours a week of writing. That' a solid place to start, and in my mind it is part time job status. Add in another 5 hours of blogging, and we are at 20 hours of working on my writing career.
Very occasionally, we may have plans that keep me up past 9 p.m. I'll try to keep that to a minimum, reserved for special occasions and such. In those cases, I'll still get up at 4:30 a.m. the next day.
Without a disciplined schedule, the whole thing falls apart. I'm hoping to get through November and December without too many interruptions and screw ups to this, so that it is pretty much just what I do when January rolls around.
As far as writing, November always tempts me with NaNoWriMo. I'm not giving into temptation this year, though I am using it as a motivating guideline. Writing two hours a day should put me in the neighborhood of 1500-2000 words, which is the NaNo pace if I do that every day. Hopefully by the end of the month, I'll have at least 50,000 words of fiction written.
I'm not pushing myself for a word count, though. I want to establish a habit of writing every day in the morning, and writing as well as I can. The word count will take care of itself. Pumping out 1667 words a day without attention to quality and content is a terrible way to become a good, working fiction writer. I'm going to try to write good, clean copy the first time out. Not that it won't need some polishing, but I want to make sure I'm writing, not just typing.
Anyway, that's the November plan. I will track the word count every day, and post it here. If it's a zero, I'll post that, too.
I'm going to do my best to end the year strong and build good habits that will carry me into a great and productive 2021.
See you tomorrow.
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