30 Day Challenge (Sunday, Oct 5 - Monday, Nov 3)

[Matt Willard]

DAY TWENTY EIGHT

Day Twenty Eight Goal: 320 words, 84 minutes (COMPLETED)

-Writing: 538 words. I decided to relax my resistance to other forms of character development, and I worked through a mini-workshop that came up with some interesting ideas. I'm going to do some more of these and see what else I can get out of it.

-Work: Since one of the projects is effectively stalled for the moment, I'm working on clearing the other out now. I feel that's it's been good for me to focus on only a few projects at a time that can yield the most important results, though I'll admit the one I'm trying to get done now is more for personal pleasure than anything. Still, as long as I keep a major focus on the important things I want to accomplish, it'll be a good tool.

[Matt Willard]

DAY TWENTY NINE

Day Twenty Nine Goal: 330 words, 86 minutes (COMPLETED)

-Writing: 473 words. I noticed that, whenever I'm not sure what to write, I get really finnicky. My head itches, I need to adjust my glasses, my fingers suddenly look very interesting...stuff like that. Maybe instead of doing that, I should write about not knowing what to write. Couldn't hurt, I suppose.

-Work: Nothing really much to report here. Spent all my time working on a single project. I'll admit that I wanted a break from the more important work I needed to do. I'm still ahead on that deadline, though, so tomorrow I'll finish that other project up.

[Marco Polo]

Wow, that's a lot of Matt Willard.

Well done my man. Keep up the good work.

[Matt Willard]

Originally Posted by Marco Polo

Wow, that's a lot of Matt Willard.

Well done my man. Keep up the good work.

The sooner that you accept that I am Legion, the better off you'll be

[Matt Willard]

DAY THIRTY

Day Thirty Goal: 340 words, 88 minutes (COMPLETED)

-Writing: 445 words. It took a lot longer to complete the writing I wanted to do today, but since I was conducting a fictional character interview, the results felt a lot more authentic to me, as I tried to figure out the best in-character responses. I'm pretty satisfied with them even if it's not that many words.

-Work: I really had to reach to fill in the alloted time again. I find that I usually am more focused if I don't drag out my work for a project past a hour. I want to see if I can increase that amount so I can take less days to complete a project (though I intend to focus my work on a small part of my day to maintain focus and keep things simple).

[Matt Willard]

These are my conclusions for my 30 day challenge of writing and working.

Word Count

I am certain that I increased the word count much too slowly for my taste. I consistently achieved word counts just above the target before quitting for the day. It's probably due to a combination of this factor ("at least I made the word count") and the fact that writing can be a mind-wracking task, where on some days, you're lucky if you get anything down at all. There's also my concern that writing too long will drain my energy and jeopardize my other goals for the day. I don't know if I'll continue with word count, but if I do, I'll focus on increasing it more steadily.

Story Planning

I discovered just how important this is. I want to write character-driven stories, and without any sort of deep knowledge of the characters and an idea where the story's gonna go, it might not go anywhere at all. I'm still testing the limits of this, and I'm anxious to get drafting again, but I'd also like to do whatever I can to avoid writer's block because of poor planning.

Being on the Clock

Being on a clock felt strange to me. Sometimes I felt rushed, sometimes I had to agonize to fill the time. I definitely agree with Cal Newport over at Study Hacks and Scott Young on his blog: it's better to focus on results than time spent working. It feels more natural to me that way too. When I get results, I feel more confident and productive.

Project Length

Though I try to single-handle my tasks until they're complete, I tend to lose focus when I work up to two hours and more on a project. However, if I split up a project into a bunch of one-hour blocks for every day, then the thing'll take forever to get done. I'm not sure how to solve this problem yet. It's definitely a question of energy management, and my next trials are going to focus on improving my diet to combat this, but all the same, I can't help but feel that there's some variables I haven't considered yet. Still, in the meantime I'm also going to start putting in deadlnes on my projects and try to shrink them over time.

Conclusions

In the end, this is a habit I definitely want to keep. Overall, I've felt quite productive during this month, and accomplished more than I've accomplished before. It still needs work, but the basics are gold. Still, I'm dropping the time requirements and word count and focusing exclusively on results, with a goal to increase them over time.

Thanks to everyone who read and posted in this thread!