For those of you not (yet!) on Twitter, this is the hash tag used by writers for a writing challenge in which writers challenge each other to write a thousand words in one hour. I started doing these a week ago, and in one week I've gone from an hourly average of 450 words to around 1,200 words an hour!
The nice thing about a challenge like this is that you're not alone, you're forced to unplug from the net for an hour, and at the end of the hour you report back to the writers you've done the challenge with, so there's accountability! And everyone's a winner, no matter how many words they achieve.
In the last week I've added about 8,000 words to my 'Just For Fun' manuscript, now titled
When September Ends. And I've also done a film shoot in between and worked some really stupid hours!
But sometimes you also just need to take a breather. I discovered, doing
Nanowrimo three years running, that just pushing out words doesn't really work for me, unless I have a really clear idea where I'm going with a story. Since this 'Just for Fun' story had no clear destination, I was starting to write scenes that really didn't fit the bigger picture.The literary equivalent of scenes that end up on the cutting room floor.
Since just adding words isn't enough to write a publishable novel, I sat for an hour this morning and made a list of all the key scenes I envisage for this story. Yes, it's the plotter in me rearing her ugly head. Now I'm armed with my bullet pointed list, my road map of where I'm headed, I'm ready for the next challenge.
So who is going to join me on my next
#1k1hr?
