Author Journal 17th – 23rd March 2022

What a week! The last seven days have just flown by. I can’t believe it’s time for another journal entry already.

I upped my writing goal to 4,000 words last week without really looking at what scenes were coming up.

Writing in Adam’s or Elle’s point of view (POV) is easy enough for me to slip into. I can happily go from one to the other and back again without too much mental prep.

But, the next scene wasn’t in either of their POVs; it was in my bad guy, Trevor Blackwell’s. To write Trevor, I have to do a fair bit of mental prep to really get into his skin. Add to that that I haven’t written in his POV since the end of last year. Yip, I started to doubt my 4K word goal right out of the gate.

Review 10th – 16th March 2022

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

How Did It Go?

On Thursday, day one of the week for me, I got myself all set up… and sat for over an hour trying and failing to get into Trevor’s head. I either had him too nice or too monstery. So, I ended up working out on paper what I wanted to see from him. It worked. Somewhere between the second and third page, I found him.

Having nailed him down, I started the timer on the not-so-great app I mentioned last week and hammered out 1073 words.

Friday was a weird day. I had an appointment later in the morning, which required some rejigging of other things, but it luckily freed up some extra writing time. Allowing me to add 1505 words!

Hmm. Saturday. Boosted by the previous day’s word count, I was raring to get on with the work. I set the app for a thirty-minute sprint… it died after ten. I reset it. It died after ten. Again, and again.

I tell you, doing the writing in ten-minute sprints is so draining and infuriating that I honestly thought I wasn’t going to break 500 for the day. But, shockingly, I hit 1094 words.

As happy as I was with the result of the day, there was no way I was doing another massive series of tiny sprints for the rest of the book. I needed a solution and fast.

Years ago, I’d bought an app called 5000 WPH by author Chris Fox. It wasn’t on my phone, but as I’d got it through the App Store, I could just redownload it. Nope. It was gone, no longer in my past purchases.

My only option was to come up with a spreadsheet. Not a fun task when you don’t deal with them for numbery stuff. But, as I opened Numbers up to stumble around making one, I saw an old file called 5KPH just lying there. It was a freebie sprint sheet I’d gotten from Chris Fox!

Sunday was my biggest writing day of the week, and I was ready. I was also flagging so much that I wanted nothing more than to crawl under a blanket on the couch and play some old Splinter Cell games. But, if I didn’t do the job, no one else was going to. I managed to force myself to sit down and get the writing done. I added 1871 words before I had to stop–due to hand pain.

I added 5,543 words, taking the manuscript to a total of 91,796!

This Week’s Writing Goals

  • Add 5,000 words to Running the Asset’s manuscript, taking it to 95,796.
  • Follow up interview with Marsha (this time on Zoom?)–if you haven’t had a chance to read my interview, head over to Marsha’s site to check it out.

See you all soon!

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

Susan

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About Me

Hi! I’m Scottish author Susan Tippett Braithwaite. I craft romantic suspense stories featuring Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies where danger and desire meet with explosive results.

Susan on Instagram

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19 responses to “Author Journal 17th – 23rd March 2022

  1. Chris Hall – South Africa – Novelist, story writer, writer of just about anything for anyone!

    Wow, wow, WOW! Fantastic progress, Susan. I’m hoping you’ve shamed me into knuckling down to do a few good writing sessions over the next few days 🙂

    1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

      Thanks, Chris! Nah, don’t feel shame. You’ve been dealing with the business side of things, AKA the scary bits! Good luck on the writing this week ?

      1. Chris Hall – South Africa – Novelist, story writer, writer of just about anything for anyone!
  2. Wow! That is just amazing! Well done !!! ????

    1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​
  3. I can see the smoke flying off your keyboard as you amass more and more words so quickly. Your current typing speed… 300 wpm.

    1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

      300 wpm! I wish, but I’m not sure my brain even works that fast. Nope, I just checked, it refuses to think faster than 13-15wpm. ?

      1. Hahahaha, I seriously doubt that. I think Cee types an incredibly lot of accurate words per minute. I think 190.At my best I was about 60 wpm. On the computer I type fast, but make tons of mistakes and erase whole sentences. So who knows. I’m curious, though. Just took a one minute test online and came up with 51 wpm for one minute with 0 errors. I had tons of trouble with the hyphen and numbers as usual.

      2. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

        Ah, you both have me beat by a long way. I can only do so much typing with CRPS, and it’s sloooow, and then there’s translating what’s in my head into English… I need treats, and often ?

      3. Writing and typing are two different speeds, though. You have to stop and think about what you are writing as you type. That’s entirely different.

  • bushboy – Landcare, photography, music, poetry (of sorts), cooking, our environment, life on the land and making a difference where I can. MotoGP is my "boy" fix.

    Isn’t it great when you find something in the folders that had an unrelated name. I hope you renamed just in case. Write on m’girl 🙂

    1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

      Thank you, Brian! I couldn’t believe my luck when I found it! I renamed it as soon as I made a copy–and left it on my desktop for easy finding.

  • Photos by Jez – I'm a Royal Navy Veteran from Scotland and love to get out and about with my wife, susantbraithwaite.com, on our Kalkhoff e-bikes. My faithful camera, Snappy, and the ever-present Lensy (lensball) are always along for the ride to capture the beauty of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿. Join me as I share photos from our travels, how Lensy views the world & pretty much anything shiny ✨

    Wow, 35% more than you intended, phenomenal work, sweetie ?

    1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

      Thank you, sweetie!!! ? ?

  • […] my latest Journal update, you’ll have seen that I’ve been cranking up my wordage outputtery. I’ve not had […]

  • Stefanie Neumann – Hamburg, Germany – The Art of Awareness – a bright light on the path of beingness. Basically I am… well… me! That contents: Dreamer. Visionary. Connector. Peacefounder. Adventurer. Teacher. Lerner. Artist. Embodied Spirit. … Born as a highly sensitive person and empath I am using these gifts to bring awareness into the world through authenticity. This comes with a natural, strong tendency for clarity. I am in love with creative expression, drawing my inspiration from a colourful, wide range of interests. People often describe me as open-hearted and friendly. What I learned from life on earth: You cannot think an experience. But you can thank for it. ************************************ Die Kunst der Gewahrsamkeit – ein helles Licht auf dem Pfad des Seins. Im Wesentlichen bin ich… nun ja… ich! Das beinhaltet: Träumerin. Visionärin. Vermittlerin. Friedensgründerin. Abenteurerin. Lehrerin. Lernende. Künstlerin. Verkörperter Geist… Als hochsensible Person und Empathin geboren, nutze ich diese Gaben, um Gewahrsamkeit durch Authentizität in die Welt zu bringen. Dies kommt mit einer natürlichen starken Neigung zur Klarheit. Ich bin in den kreativen Ausdruck verliebt, wobei ich meine Inspiration von einer bunten Palette an vielseitigen Interessen beziehe. Menschen beschreiben mich oft als offenherzig und freundlich. Was ich vom Leben auf der Erde gelernt habe: Man kann eine Erfahrung nicht denken. Doch man kann für sie danken.

    Wow… 5000 words!
    I’m in awe.
    ???

    1. Stefanie Neumann – Hamburg, Germany – The Art of Awareness – a bright light on the path of beingness. Basically I am… well… me! That contents: Dreamer. Visionary. Connector. Peacefounder. Adventurer. Teacher. Lerner. Artist. Embodied Spirit. … Born as a highly sensitive person and empath I am using these gifts to bring awareness into the world through authenticity. This comes with a natural, strong tendency for clarity. I am in love with creative expression, drawing my inspiration from a colourful, wide range of interests. People often describe me as open-hearted and friendly. What I learned from life on earth: You cannot think an experience. But you can thank for it. ************************************ Die Kunst der Gewahrsamkeit – ein helles Licht auf dem Pfad des Seins. Im Wesentlichen bin ich… nun ja… ich! Das beinhaltet: Träumerin. Visionärin. Vermittlerin. Friedensgründerin. Abenteurerin. Lehrerin. Lernende. Künstlerin. Verkörperter Geist… Als hochsensible Person und Empathin geboren, nutze ich diese Gaben, um Gewahrsamkeit durch Authentizität in die Welt zu bringen. Dies kommt mit einer natürlichen starken Neigung zur Klarheit. Ich bin in den kreativen Ausdruck verliebt, wobei ich meine Inspiration von einer bunten Palette an vielseitigen Interessen beziehe. Menschen beschreiben mich oft als offenherzig und freundlich. Was ich vom Leben auf der Erde gelernt habe: Man kann eine Erfahrung nicht denken. Doch man kann für sie danken.

      *over 5000 words, of course!

      1. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​

        I kent fit ye ettled ?

    2. Susan T. Braithwaite – Glasgow, Scotland – 📚 Scottish author who loves writing romantic suspense books filled with Sex, Lies, Scots & Spies that will make your heart race 💗
Explore the world of Scottish spies with me. I live in Scotland with my awesome husband, Jez (check out his photo and AI art fusion blog: jezbraithwaite.blog).​
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