Last week, I managed to be incredibly focused. I wrote 10K words per day, while still keeping up 10K steps per day. I was away from home at a writing retreat. The only thing I had to do while I was there was write.

This week, I tried to recreate that success, to remain focused and just write.

The good news is that I managed one day out of three to “write like the wind”. Wrote about 7000 words that day.

The bad news is that I didn’t repeat the process for the other two days. I had very low word count those days, very little focus.

Now, I need to figure out what I have to do up here, at home, with a million distractions, to refocus and just write.

Part of the problem with this past week was at first, I was fighting with writer brain. I need to write and finish a short story. She’s not sure that what I’m writing is a short story. It might be a novel, or at the very least, a novella.

I tried to bargain with her: Write me the short story first, we can use it as the first chapter, and then I’ll write the rest of it later.

I’m not sure she’s happy with that. So I might have to put this story start to the side and start afresh. Again. (Did I mention that I have a hard deadline of June 1st for this short story?)

As for the other project, the first day I switched to it I “wrote like the wind”. But then the second day, I got distracted. I couldn’t figure out what happened next. Writer brain wasn’t being very helpful, either. I also had a massive headache that day. While at the writing retreat, I wrote despite the headaches. I find it more difficult to do that here.

My goal for next week: Manage two days of writing like the wind. I’ve proven to myself that I can manage one. Let’s see if I can stretch it to two. I know that I need to change some of the processes that I already have in place. I’m unsure what other tweaks I’ll need to make.

I’d like to “write like the wind” three days a week, every week. I’m pretty sure I can do this, as I’ve already proven that I can. A huge part of it is just staying focused, staying at the keyboard, typing the next sentence.

Today, I’m not even trying to write: I have a headache that’s decided to transform into a migraine. Fortunately, I have other things to do instead.

Hope everyone has a marvelous weekend!