This is my first week of writing this since I committed to doing it.

Let’s get all the excuses out of the way first. Work has been busy this week, but work has been busy for a while now. And that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this.

For a long time now, I’ve been using pomodoro to both work and write. I find that turning on a 25 minute timer with white noise helps me focus. It’s not always perfect focus, and creativity sometimes takes a while to come, but it helps me get into the flow and minimise distractions.

So what have I achieved this week? I use dictation software to get ideas down quickly. I find that I can do this anywhere, even in the car with a dictaphone and headset. And I use an app called Tally to keep track of how long I’m writing/dictating for. I spent 15 minutes dictating on Wednesday and 20 minutes on Thursday. But because I’m writing this, and because I want to be accountable to anyone who’s reading, I spent more time on this today. I spent 35 minutes dictating in the car on the way back from taking Felicity (my daughter) to Stage Coach and then an hour and 40 minutes putting it all together into a first draft. Everything I read says don’t edit your first draft, just get it down, but I can’t help it. I go through it and try to improve it, and the more it’s on my mind, the better the writing becomes (albeit still a first draft and far from complete).

So that gave me 1753 words completed this week, which is my target of 1 scene/chapter, so this week I’ve done what I planned.

Thank you for reading.