Writing with intention

A few days ago, I started work on a new novel. I'd had the idea for quite some time, and it had already gone through a few different iterations over the years. At first it was a screenplay, then a short story, and then a few weeks ago it became something else entirely.

I sat down and started to jot down everything I thought I knew about the world in which the story would be set, and that just exploded. From an initial What if... concept came an entire universe of setting, story and expansion, leaving me with a world-building document that could happily keep me writing for several years in this new setting.

Before I knew it--actually it was about two weeks--I had fleshed out a good outline and chapter breakdown of a novel, and set myself a goal of writing just 750 words a day.

Now, normally when I write, and as had been the case with the Louise Miller books, I would be looking at a daily word count of 2'000. 750? Surely that's too low?

Well, this is a different kind of novel for me to write. Without giving too much away just yet, here's a couple of snippets from the project overview:

...explores the ultimate emotional tariff of choice, asking a fundamental question about the human condition: Does true survival require the surrender of our moral dignity, or is a life without defiance a slow spiritual death?

... to examine the raw, enduring geometry of human love, memory, and regret. 

There are some big topics I want to explore here, and with a word count of 750, I can ensure I take the time to make every word count. That each sentence, each paragraph can be structured with the themes in mind.

Writing with intention, and not just churning it out with the aim of fixing everything in the rewrites. I started this practice towards the end of writing 'Til It Bleeds, (only £2.99 😎) with the last couple of chapters being pretty clean once finished. It was the rest of the book, especially the early parts that required quite a lot of editing and rewriting. I don't want to waste that time here.

So far I've written 8 pages, around 2250 words, and they are the cleanest work I've ever done. Sure, there'll be a couple of word swaps later, there's always room for a tidy up, but as for structure, pacing etc... I'm really happy with it.

Each day I set aside around 3 hours to work on the next 750 words. No music. No distractions. Just me , the rough outline and the book. I'm taking my time - the scheduled finish date for this is the end of November - and really enjoying this new approach to writing. I think I'm getting the best work I've ever done from it, and each day (so far) I've been excited to get back to the laptop and continue.

I'll get a little further in before I start revealling a bit more about what I'm actually writing as I'd much rather put the energy into actually writing the book rather than talking about the book to come, so if I go quiet on it for a few months, you now know why.

But if you're working on a book or story yourself, try limiting your daily word count so you can slow down and write with a little more intention. You may surprise yourself.