Today I have three hours set out to write. Here’s what it looks like.

In the first hour I edited about 10000 words on War Child. This first third of this book will be edited quickly as it’s pretty clean and has had a lot of work on it. I feel like I’m just tweaking bits and focussing on continuity.

Have I spent the whole hour working on it? No. Maybe fifty minutes were. The other ten minutes were taken up with changing how I was sitting, having a drink, and putting some washing on an airer.

Right, an hour and a half later and my brain has just said ‘Nope’. In about 2 hours and 30 minutes I’ve edited 20800 words and added 331 to the draft. So technically not three hours but for the time slot I allocated I think that’s a productive use of the time. Also if I force it I’ll start making mistakes I’ll have to fox in the next session. As I said earlier, this part of the book doesn’t need much work and as I get to the second two thirds of the book I’ll have more to do.

I don’t spend the entire time writing, even if I log it like I have done. When I am doing something like putting washing on the airer I’m either thinking about the story or nothing at all. Some times I need a small break like that to let my brain rest before diving in again.

Not that long ago I would have struggled to get this amount of work done in half that time. My brain would have stopped me at 10k edited. Now my brain has stopped me because I’ve run out of juice. Like so much in life, the more I do this the more I’ll be able to do before my brain shuts me down.