Today’s kind of both my ROW80 post and me ranting a little. I know, but try to remain a little surprised, okay?

One of the things about being your own publisher is that you often get lost in all the minutiae of all the things you need to do that a publisher would do for you. For me, I was translating that as part of my writing time. Googling vendors, updating the epubs of my books, contacting places for signings and such… It all got lumped in with writing.

It’s not writing.

Writing used to be this uncrackable habit for me. If I wasn’t writing, I would get antsy. I would scribble scenes down in the middle of meetings. I’d talk to myself in the car, and work out plot issues while I was in the shower. It was consuming.

But I’ve lost that.

There have been a lot of changes since I started publishing. Life came up, and I thought, hey, I can slide a little here, if I make it up there. And if I’m working on business things, then it counts for writing time. But I was wrong.

Writing time is for writing.

Seems pretty basic, right? You’d think so. But it’s easy to lose oneself. And I did. I’ve lost the writing habit.

Now it’s all work.

So, I’m working on building a new habit of writing. Just writing. I roped a few of my friends into doing the Magic Spreadsheet that Mur Lafferty talks about on the I Should Be Writing podcast. The one she does is an open, Google Docs spreadsheet that anyone can join. And there’s a whole community there. But i didn’t want to do that. So I created my own spreadsheet that does the same thing (with the exception of the live leader board because I looked at the coding on that and my eyes bulged out) and my CPs and I are going to do it within our group.

Each day, I will commit myself to writing 250 words. That’s all. I know I can do so much more, but the point is that I need to understand that writing time is writing. That is what I need to be doing. Not writing interviews or blogging or tweeting, or doing anything else that takes away from the writing.

There will be words.

In my WIP. Everyday. 250 of them. Or more. But that’s the minimum.

This is timely, because the kids started school this week. This means, I have plenty of time to get things done and still get writing in for the day. Sure, life will happen, things will go wrong. But the consistent thing that will happen is 250 words a day on my WIP until it is finished. And then it will be 250 words on the next WIP. Everyday.

Our official start date isn’t until September 1, because I didn’t want to code a partial sheet for August. But I’ve already started, as practice, as a warmup for what’s to come. It also takes into effect that for one member of our group, her kids don’t start back for another week.

My goal is to create a new, consistent writerly habit. One that I used to have at one point. And I’m challenging you to do something similar.

Take back your writing time. Don’t let life interfere. Give yourself a simple 250 words a day.

Quick ROW80 update.

Heart and Snow is coming along nicely. If I keep up by 2500 word days this week, I should be done by this weekend. And then I can do that resting thing, right? Not really. I’m pushing to make this deadline, but really, I can’t wait until Sept 1 when I push myself for consistency rather than quantity. I think that will be what’s best for my writing then.