Writing Bootcamp

I did something unusual this weekend that I’m hoping to continue. I walked down to my local coffee shop and camped out until I had produced a lot of words. About 4,000, to be precise.

One of the things that surprises me about my productivity is how inconsistent it can be. This is a direct function of time and distractions, I suspect, and of how much awesome regenerative activity I’m engaged in. I came into this writing day with two weeks of awesome dinner parties and heavy physical activity to prop me up. I came into it having meditated for days on where my characters were going, and gave myself a day off of writing to finish reading a book I had been nibbling away at the night before. In essence, I came into this weekend of writing rested and brimming with experiences that could be made into words.

There were other factors, of course. I have been writing every day for the past two weeks, even if I only managed a few sentences. That kind of regular exercise of my writing muscles keeps me in shape. But while I blasted through the first 3,000 words on Saturday, and slowly meandered through another 1,000 that evening, I had to scrape the last 1,000 words out of me on Sunday. I really think, given that, that rest and reading and good food with friends was a large part of the equation. It has the advantage of being an element that I’m more than happy to repeat.

In any case, it was a wonderous, 5,000-word weekend, and I hope to capitalize on my new profligacy.