Building the habit--rewrite, day 2

Not great progress today, but improved progress, so I'm satisfied. It's like starting a workout routine after many months on the couch. You wish you could run five miles at the same pace you used to do it back before you let things slip, but it takes time to build up to that distance and to build up to that speed.

I was able to write for a little longer today with a little more of the feeling that I was getting in the groove. Nothing to get excited about, but a little better.

Specifically, I worked for an hour, the same as yesterday. But less time was spent reading through and fine tuning existing material and more time was spent creating new material. 600 words today as opposed to 200 words yesterday.

(I know from the drafting stage that I write about 1000 words longhand. I don't know on the computer. But assuming the same, that figures to about 35-40 minutes of "writing" today vs. diddling around.)

Some of it was not necessarily going deeper into the story. It was just adding more detail at the same level. But I could feel a couple moments where I was adding a detail that told us more about the interior reality of the character and his longing and motivation.

Closer. Closer. The main thing is to make it a habit and trust that something good will emerge out of it over the long term. You have to DO it one day at a time without JUDGING the product of any single day.