Joys of Writing

     I consider any fears I had of continuing to write after having finished a large work to be banished.  I wrote 3k words yesterday, somehow, with school and a six hour shift at work.  I'm writing my dungeon crawl, or DC as I have it in my weekly writing planner, and because I haven't really looked at it for a couple of months (since June) I had to entirely work the third chapter to get it to fit in with the notes I have in my notebook.  I had to cut out a fight scene I really liked with my main character Perrad and one of the black creatures inhabiting the underground city, but hopefully I can find a place for it in a subsequent chapter.
     Speaking of a weekly writing planner, I can't recommend them enough if you write for your word count, or if that's how you measure your progress.  Every time I sit down to write I hope to get 2000 words on the page in however long it takes me to write them.  I know my exact word count every day since September 7th, but I have no idea how much time it took me to write.  I'm very easily distracted when I write, and if I had to account for every time I got up from my chair to pace around the house, or some up with some question that I had to google that simply couldn't afford to wait, I'd be spending more time clocking in and out than I would working.  I tallied up all of my words that I've written since Sept 7th, for no good reason other than I wanted to know, and I was amazed that I have written just over 40,000 words since I got the thing.  Doing the obvious division, that comes out to just over 1500 words/day.  Less than my desired total, but this is every day, even the ones I didn't write on, the time I've been sick, the days I was so tired from school or work that I barely managed to write a few hundred words.  This is an invaluable tool for me, because it's a great way to track my own progress.  I suggest, if you don't have anything that you're currently using to track word counts, that you get something, even if it's just an excel spreadsheet.  They'll do wonders, not just to keep track, but to motivate you to put something down for that day.
     One more thing and I'm out...  I'm awful at this social networking thing, I just am.  I have no idea where to go about talking to people or asking them to be my friend or what to tweet.  But I did start a twitter page, just search my name, Lee Shelly Allen, and a facebook (under my name too).  I'm not published yet, so I won't expect any great things like people googling my name, but I am out there if you care to see what I'm up to.  Here's a sneak preview for anybody reading - I'm probably writing.