Momentum

One of the things I had forgotten about the application of oneself to large-scale projects is that momentum plays a big factor in getting said projects done. Last week presented more of a challenge than may have come off in my last post, and I had a pretty hard time - first sitting myself down and organizing all my notes, then beginning to actually write. Progress was--shall we say--halting, and as a consequence, the five days of work I had anticipated turned into seven.

But by Sunday night, with Section 1 finished, I was back on schedule, and the previous four days of solid writing set the stage for Monday, when I woke up, organized my notes for Section 2, took care of some other business, found a setting conducive to working in one of Sofia's many coffee shops, sat down, and, intermittently over the course of the next 14 hours (don't worry, I changed locations), pounded out the entirety of that section. That left me with two full days to write Section 3, which I just finished mere minutes ago. So, 13,000 words in, I'm still right on schedule. And now, having pigheadedly stuck to the time budget I set for myself, I have four free days to go explore Vienna.

It just goes to show that, at least for me--and, I suspect, for much of homo sapiens sapiens--starting (or restarting) something is the hardest part of completing anything. It's the same way when I have to go for runs - I may, in some extreme cases, let hours go by in the most extravagant displays of procrastination the Earth has yet seen, but once I'm out the door, it gets done. Having spent so much of the previous week writing, without even a pause for the weekend's sake, catapulted me right into this week's bout with the lingering parts of my childish irresponsibility.

None of this bodes well for next week, of course--a four-day weekend reserved purely for sightseeing and jollity will surely kill any momentum I may have built thus far--but for this week, I'm right on schedule, and (as I just realized, having looked up at the calendar) nearly halfway done with the initial drafting process, which should be significantly harder than the revision stage. So, all I have to do is to continue to procure the smoke and mirrors for another 3 weeks, which will take us well into the month of June (Hard to believe, isn't it?).

So there's the first third of this thing disposed with. As of now, it's on (the alarming) pace to come in between 120 and 150 pages, and has an outside shot at threatening 40,000 words - much longer than I had envisioned it. But we'll see how much of the actual material I write ends up on the cutting room floor. Probably, though, better to be too long than too short.

Next time, we'll talk about my weekend in Vienna, and after that, it's back to work. Until then -