When I was at the top of my writing streak, I was writing 3000-4000 words a day. I did that on and off for a few months and wrote four books in that time. It felt great to sit and type. I was also blogging daily. That helped to keep my mind fresh and my fingers nimble.

With my day job, I spend a LOT of time typing, so speed has never been an issue. I haven’t really slowed down with my typing pace. I’ve never formally measured my typing speed (some day I should do that) but I’m confident it’s over 70 WPM and probably higher than I think it is.

Words flow quickly from my fingers. I remember having a 30 minute writing race with J. Daniel Sawyer and pounding out just over 1500 words in that time. Again, this was when I was at the top of my game writing semi-regular and blogging daily. I was deep in a story and it was easy.

I’d love to get back there again. I can still type fast and I know where my story is going, but my creative muscle hasn’t been taxed like this in a long time. I just sat for 1.5 hours and wrote 2500 words. I’d love to do more, but seriously, I’m exhausted. I feel like I ran a mental marathon. I know that I could write more, but right now I don’t want to push myself. It’s like jogging. You don’t get out and run 15 miles on your first time out in a long time.

I’ve only been back to writing for 11 days after a great deal of time not writing. Yes, I mentally thought about the stories I wanted to write which is why GRPC 2 is an easy write for me, but getting into those characters’ heads and changing viewpoints and remembering events from the past story. It’s a lot at the moment. That, and I still have a family :). There’s still news and TV shows I’d like to watch. Books I’d like to read. Comics. etc.

And that’s something I needed to take a step back at. How much media was I consuming.  Especially the news. Wow. So much time I could have been writing. So that’s what I’ve done. I try to limit my time watching TV. That’s all I did. a couple hours not watching the news and using that time to write instead. And presto, I have an 11 day streak going. WOO!

So I’ll be brief tonight. I’ll try to do more thoughtful posts in the future with things like advice from Neil Gaiman, Isaac Asimov (Thank you Mike!) and links to some of the writing blogs I read and why I read them. I may even do some reviews of some of the media I’ve consumed over the past couple of years while I wasn’t writing 🙂 No, I won’t discuss the election or any of the news I watched about it. That’s what polluted my brain last year and I don’t wish to relive it.

So my steak increased, I’m happy about my words, I hope you will be as well when I finish and release this book. For now, I need to relax my brain for a while and I’ll do it again tomorrow.

Until Next Time

WOO WOO!