I’m on week four, and my streak is still going! A daily writing habit has been on my goal list for 2026, and ten months in, it’s finally happening. Because I write by hand in spiral notebooks, seeing how many notebooks I’ve filled gives me an idea on word count and how far along the characters are in the story.
Some days are stuffed with appointments and tasks. I’ve written a scene or a page right before bed. After all my years of writing and publishing, I guess I haven’t done this. Or if I have, it worked out better. Now, my mind says, “Oh, okay. We’re not going to sleep. Here’s 500 random thoughts to keep you awake for the next three hours.” So, I’ve made sure that however long I write to keep the streak going, I’m done at least an hour before I head to bed.
I know what it’s like to stop working on a manuscript then get back to it some weeks or months (or years) later. It’s really hard to get back into the story. I read over my world notes and the timeline of the book(s) before the one I’m working on. But it’s always a struggle to reenter the project.
The best way to not deal with all that? Keep going. I’ve written in multiple manuscripts simultaneously before. I don’t get lost moving from one to another. It takes longer to finish one, but at least I’m making progress. I remind myself of that now. Even if I write one page or one scene, it keeps the streak alive. I won’t forget the story lines or where each character is or what they’ve already done. For me, everything is better with a streak.
I have one spiral completed. I’m halfway through a second spiral. I know I get myopic when I write, absorbed in the scene so I can record the thoughts and feelings of the characters. I mentioned before that there are three crimes to solve. The cold case has been solved. The perpetrators died years earlier, so the main character from book 2 will need to decide if justice was served. That leaves a crime where two villains will need to be arrested, and then the main conflict will need to be resolved. Pretty sure the Russian mafia guy in charge of the syndicate will put up a worthy fight.
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