Getting the Words Down

Last night should have been my twenty-third straight day writing at least 750 words over at 750 Words. Unfortunately, something that normally makes me happy ended up being the downfall for my current streak — I got into my writing and lost track of time. In the middle of a sentence, while I was trying to figure out exactly how to phrase what I wanted to say, the clock hit midnight on the Pacific Coast, and 750 Words popped up the red flag and froze my text box. Too late, try again tomorrow.

So much for almost a solid month’s streak. Today, I started again at day one.

When it first happened, I was pissed. Couldn’t believe I’d lost track of time, couldn’t believe the site would cut me off mid-sentence (mid-word, even!), couldn’t believe any of it. My husband was lucky he’d already crashed out in bed, because I’m sure I would have ranted at him about how annoyed with myself I was — and in fact I did, once we were both awake this morning.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe it was a blessing in disguise. I’d been in the habit the last few nights of putting off my writing until after I’d done a million other things, and while some of it was unavoidable, some of it was just silly crap that distracted me from what I know perfectly well I should be doing instead. Does it really matter to me if I get through my whole Tumblr feed as soon as I get home from work? Of course not. So why would I not write first? Certainly it might help me not to get into the bad situation of trying to do my writing in the last hour of the evening again. And if I do more later in the evening, hey, great! Twice the progress. I have a lot of projects I want to work on right now, and in addition to the editing I do, that’s a lot of work to get done outside my forty-hour day job. I don’t always have time to be twiddling around with social media. Lesson learned: write first.

And there’s another nice lesson hiding in all of this, too. As annoying as it was to lose track of time and break my streak because of that, I like when I completely lose track of time while I’m writing. That’s a good thing. When I’m lost in my writing and forget what time it is, and even that I’m trying to write a particular number of words before a particular time, that means I’m focusing on the important thing — the scene that I’m writing.

So there you have it. It’s frustrating to be back at square one, but it’s not all bad. And in less than a month, I can be right back to where I was.

And this time, I’ll set an alarm for 11:50 on the nights when I’m writing late