There’s a saying ‘A professional writer is an amateur that didn’t quit’ and it’s one that I’ve decided to take very seriously indeed. You see I didn’t name this blog ‘Mother Worker Girl-Who-Talks-About-Writing-But-Doesn’t-Actually-Write-Much’ for a reason; apart from the fact that it’s just not catchy, I simply don’t want to be one of those people. The kind of person who bores everyone senseless taking about their ‘bewk’ but never seems to actually write any of it. But to be honest, in recent months, I’ve been looking right down that slippery slope, in very real danger of toppling…

So I’m on a new mission. Inspired by an iphone app called C25k. Now this app has nothing to do with writing. I first heard of it on Rollercoaster – the parenting website without whom my children would be malnourished and even more unbearable – and it’s to do with running. Going from not running at all to running 5k a week, to be exact, in fact its name is an abbreviation of ‘Couch to 5k’. No beating around the bush there.

Now I don’t intend running anywhere, but I think if I did, judging from the girls’ success rates, this is the way I’d go. It’s all about setting attainable targets and to coin a phrase ‘just doing it’.

Enter my new campaign ‘500 Words a Day’. I did try to think of a cool, snappy abbreviation but ‘Sweet-Fanny-Adams to 5k’ doesn’t sound great. I originally aimed to write 5,000 words a week but that’s where the whole ‘attainable targets’ thing kicked in, and I had a second think about it. Also, a weekly target for me just doesn’t work, I know I’d do nothing for the first four days and then try and pile it all into the last three, fail miserably and give up. So I came up with 500 words a day, and as a result, over the last ten days I’m proud to say my word count has reached exactly 5,340. And I know, for a fact, that that is probably 5,340 more words than I’d have written in the last ten days under the old regime which involved rushing out a chapter every two weeks during lunchtime in advance of writing group that evening.

So when do I crank out these five hundred words? Well usually in the evening, between about seven and nine thirty. When yes, there are a million other things that I could/should be doing (incidentally, everyone out there should really read http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/i-should-be/ an excellent blog post on that very subject). Last Friday night was the first night that I drew a complete blank and so miserable and defeatist I went to bed. However, when I found myself up at six thirty the following morning with the youngest, bleary eyed and with Barney droning away beside me, I opened the laptop and got 1,200 written before 8.00am.

And boring as it may be to my Twitter followers, I post my total every evening. My apologies to you all, but it’s the discipline I need. Incidentally, whilst having Twitter open should be a distraction, in a strange way it helps me feel that I’m not alone, that there are lots of Mother Worker Writers out there, all trying to fit in their daily quota.

After all, is not for nothing that PG Wodehouse once said ‘I’d like to dedicate this book to my daughter, without whom it would have been finished in half the time.’

I’ll keep you posted on my progress…