Words Per Day--Inspiration by the Paragraph

When I was writing The Stone Dragon, my routine was to write two hundred words per day, Monday through Friday, and then to write a thousand words over the weekend . . . minimum. Often I wrote more, but the minimum word count maintained my writing discipline. This was a reasonable routine for someone working full time and writing in spare time.

My experience is that once I begin writing every day, I begin to think about the story throughout the day, to have realizations about the action and characters, to imagine new possibilities. On some quiet level, I begin to live the story; by that I mean its creation becomes a part of my everyday experience, which is enjoyable and also enchanting.

Now I've chosen to write a short story, tentatively titled "Blade." I've decided on the technical point of view, good old third person, and I feel pretty comfortable about the tone--telling the story as a legend in the making. So I'll write and write, and at some point it will feel like work because writing does take energy, but once the story is unfolding, a certain curiosity also pervails.

Now I need to get the dern thang written, and I'm falling back on my tried-and-true method of assigning myself a minimum daily writing amount--two hundred words. This, of course, is a very low "assignment," but I feel that will establish my daily routine for this duration of this story, and that the momentum of the story will carry the writing for a higher productivity. That's the plan!

Let's see in a week how far I've gotten.