SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

I’ve been counting down the days for the last month or so. Chomping at the bit to get back to the actual writing of Running the Asset. Well, that time finally came last week. That’s also around the time a wee bit of fear slipped in, tainting my excitement.

Getting back into writing fiction after a break can be a scary thing. It’s like riding a bike after a long time, I suppose. But, not in the analogous way of how you never forget how to do it.

I mean, the excitement of planning to ride a bike after ten years of not even being near one. You’re so psyched to do it, but that voice in your head starts to question if you can still physically do it. What if you fall? What if you hate it now? What if you can’t cycle up those big hills? (Yip, I had all those thoughts and more about riding my bike after ten years of no cycling.)

I hadn’t forgotten how to write fiction; that wasn’t where my fears lay. My fears were related to quality and speed. I worried that I’d mess with the original tone, the characters, the flow. What if I couldn’t write as well as I had before I stepped back to re-outline? What if I wasn’t able to match my previous words per day?

But, much like the old bike analogy, I would never know until I got my arse in the seat and got to pedalling writing.

Review 3rd – 9th March 2022

Here’s what last week’s goals looked like:

• Add 3,000 words to Running the Asset’s manuscript, taking it to 84,675.

How Did It Go?

Thursday, the start of my work week, was slow. So slow that I started to doubt that I’d get anywhere close to my word count for the week.

Even though I had a detailed scene outline, I was stuck. Frozen. People often say that fear brings out a “fight or flight” response, but that’s inaccurate. The response is actually fight, flight, or freeze. Freeze is my go-to response. To get out of my stuck state, I used a Pomodoro timer and forced 453 words onto the manuscript.

The Pomodoro was great, but I love keeping track of, well, everything, and the app I have doesn’t record word count. So, on Friday, I got myself a cheap app called Write/Sprint. This isn’t an endorsement of the app. It’s not the greatest, and there are some annoying flaws in the programming (when I have time, I’ll contact the developer about them). But with some tweaks, it records the sprint lengths and words added during it.

With the new app, I could get out of my head and away from the fear of messing up. I had a new thing to fear, crappy words per sprint results. I added 753 words that day; 950 on the next. But Sunday blew me away. 1422 words!

My goal was to add 3,000 words. A quick bit of finger counting says I got a total of 3,578. ? That takes the manuscript to 85,253 words. Not too shabby for the first week back. ?

This Week’s Writing Goals

I’m going to be brave and up my goal for this week. Instead of aiming for 3K words, I aim to…

• Add 4,000 words to Running the Asset’s manuscript, taking it to 89,235.

See you all soon!

That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by, and take care.

Susan