Of Accountability and Ninjas

Writing is hard at the best of times.

At the worst? It's Mission: Impossible, complete with an exploding tape deck and suspenseful theme music. And ninjas.

Flippin' ninjas whose sole intention is to distract you from your WIPs by assaulting you with the time-consuming distractions of everyday life.

I could explain my own personal ninjas in some detail, but that's a whole 'nother blog post. Suffice it to say that helping your family open up a new gift shop/boutique when your health isn't exactly at 100% can really put a hitch in your writing schedule.

But I fully intend to remedy that.

In spite of all the distractions, there is still one thing that is absolutely guaranteed to keep me writing, even when the ninjas are kicking my butt... Accountability.

Be it writing sprints on Twitter or the updates expected of me by my alpha readers, I write more when someone's holding me accountable for my efforts. So from now until book three in the Variant Series is finished, I'll be posting my progress each week here on the blog as a part of my posts. It will keep me working on book three, and should finally get me blogging again. Win-win!

Also, for the record, I'll be starting this accountability thing off at 26,279 words.*

The Variant Series: Book 3 Progress Bar

 

If I don't update next week at a number that's over 30,000, feel free to give me grief. I'll totally deserve it.

A couple things to note here... That 75K goal is a guesstimate. More than likely, if I keep heading on this same track, book three ought to come in at something closer to 90K. Also, when I reach the last 1/4 of the book, I tend to write upwards of 5,000 words a day, so don't be discouraged by that low number you see in the bar! I'm still struggling to get into the groove of writing regularly again, but if this accountability thing goes as planned, I should be making steady progress on the draft again soon!

Okay, y'all. My infusion is almost over, so I need to wrap this up before the nurse returns to unchain me from this IV and I head home for a much needed nap.**

I think this week I'll leave you with a few of the tunes that have been stuck in my head lately. Hope you find something here to enjoy!




Have a great rest of the week, guys! :)

~Jena


*That number could be a bit higher, but I'm not including the scenes I've written that are out of sequence and haven't been added in yet. Just in case they don't get used.

**This has to do with that whole my health is not 100% thing I mentioned earlier. The good thing about being chained to an IV for four and a half hours (besides the six weeks of good health it offers me) is that it forces me to work. Hence this blog post. So freaking yay for that.