Magic Spread Sheet

As you all know things have been pretty stressful here at Chez Paula for the last month or so and my writing has suffered.  In fact it would be fair to say my muse has retreated to the bottom of the garden and is hiding under the brambles refusing to come out.  In short drastic action is required to kick my butt back into gear and get back on track get Voices out, the novel edited and start the vampire novella my daughter wants me to write.

I have mentioned before I love listening to pod casts, I take in so much through auditory stimulation so as you would imagine there are a couple of writing pod casts included.  One of which is I should be Writing by Mur Lafferty where she has discussed the Magic Spreadsheet on a few occasions and it is a system she uses herself.   Today I decided action was required and decided to take a closer look.

Rather than try to explain it all to you, I will grab an explanation from the actual Spreadsheet

You earn one point for every day you write at least 250 words, plus one point for every day in your unbroken chain (capped at 30). So, for instance, on day one you’d earn two points (one for writing 250 words, one for establishing a chain of length one), on day two you’d earn three points (one point for 250 words again, plus two points for a chain of length two), and so on. If you miss a day, you drop back to zero.

You earn bonus points for writing more words: 250 words = one point, 500 words = two points, 1000 words = three points, 2000 words = four points.

You will earn far more points for hitting your daily minimum consistently than from writing in bursts. Someone who hits the minimum every day for a month will write 7,250 words but earn nearly 500 points. Someone who writes 2,000 words every other day will end the month with 30,000 words but only 75 points. Big difference. Consistency is key.

So far I have tried this for two weeks and it has worked.  Now this has been helped possibly be the fact I only have to write 250 at the minute to keep my chain going.  Easy enough to do even on the busiest of days.

Different people do seem to include different things in their word count judging from posts on the Facebook and Google community pages  I have decided to just include my blog and any fiction I am working on towards publication I was tempted to add my writing journal in but to encourage me to use it more but the idea of counting words didn’t appeal and not sure how you judge a scribble lol.

So far it is working for me I will let you know more in my monthly review at the end of September.

For anyone wondering where yesterdays Udolpho post was I decided to leave it until next week I had read one chapter and moved onto the next and I think it will be more interesting to deal with them together but it is starting to get interesting.