Russell Blake has a great blog post of tips for writing efficiently. I liked it so much that I actually took the rules that were most meaningful to me and turned them into a sticky post on my desktop so that I would see them every morning when I started up the computer.

How come I learned to ignore them so easily?

Yesterday’s word count was negative. I let myself get sucked into editing the words I’d already written–a mistake that Blake describes as “trying to run a marathon carrying an anvil” and never moved beyond it.

That said, I did a lot of other useful stuff yesterday. I finally called a floor company and made an appointment to have someone come give me an estimate; I paid some bills that had been lurking and were over-due; I re-formatted A Gift of Ghosts with its new cover and managed to get it uploaded to Amazon with more technical difficulties than made any sense whatsoever; I managed to finish all the laundry, including folding and putting away. I even changed the sheets on the bed. Today, though, I’m starting with words. I’m going to try writing sprints with internet disconnect, so 45 minute periods where the only thing I let myself do is stare at the open file and type new words into it. The goal: 1000 words. The ambition: to take 2 or 3 sprints to do it, not 10.