bradsalomons I’ve been spending a lot of time #writing and drinking #coffee but progress on the novel has been a little slow this year so far. I had a great big push late in 2024 to get though the second half and then hit a bit of a block.

Many writing folks will tell you to push through the block and put in the effort and just write, and I did that, getting in my daily word count on other side projects. And that was fine to a point, but none of it was dislodging the plot block in the novel.

Last week I decided to brute force the damn thing and so I’ve set my daily word goal a bit lower and have been writing a bare minimum of words into the novel regardless of other factors.

Specifically, where I was usually tasking myself with sitting down and writing a scene, usually amounting to between 1000-1500 words, now I’m setting the daily goal of 250 words. Yeah, that’s a lot less, but after a week of generously meeting my goal each day I’m nearly 2000 words ahead of where i was last Monday, and that accounts for (sadly) more than half of the words I’ve written in 2025 on this project.

Happily, progress is progress is progress, and the “just write” advice is definitely locked in and valid.