Day 1—Monday
The last week of the Write ON Program begins!
Yesterday I realised that I needed to actually get physical with my manuscript if I wanted to be more successful with restructuring Chapter 2. I was too attached to the fact that I had words on the screen, and getting rid of them (and seeing that word count figure I’d clawed my way towards decline) seemed a difficult task. So I reverted to printing out the chunks I knew needed to find a new home (arranged in a row across the top of the picture to the left), and then started to write the chapter by hand.
I probably haven’t written so much by hand consecutively since I finished my Leaving Cert exams, and my shoulder isn’t very happy with me, but I found it a surprisingly useful exercise. Whether it was because of the change of medium or because the very act of writing by hand uses different parts of your brain, I found myself being able to grasp more easily why certain sentences had been bothering me, and it was easier to give myself permission to either rework them or omit them. So in this morning’s session I’m going to start to type what I did yesterday into Scrivener, and then this afternoon continue in the same longhand mode.
Session Total: 427 words. I made edits to the introduction and tidied up some references that have had lots of “Source this!!” bits in them for ages, and typed up the re-written introduction to Chapter 2.
Day 2—Tuesday
Last night, my entire neighbourhood lost power thanks to a rainstorm of sufficient intensity to impress even this Irishwoman. I ended up writing longhand by candlelight, which I thought was quite fittingly monastic, actually. Today I’ll again be writing up the edits I made yesterday.
Session Total: 306 words. One section cleaned up fully, began to revise a second.
Day 3—Wednesday
I did not in fact do any work yesterday afternoon, choosing instead to go to see a movie and pick up some things I needed at the mall. That qualifies as unbridled hedonism in the life of a grad student. So I’m going to spend the first hour of this session on writing out longhand the revised second chapter, and the second hour writing them up.
Session Total: 353 words.
End-of-week Total: 1086 words.
And, since this is the very last day of the programme for me:
Write-In Total: 12,023 words in eight weeks. That’s roughly 50 pages, by my calculations. I’ve got two chapters reasonably well roughed-out, and a fair idea of where I’m going with another two. Progress!