I wrote almost 2000 words today. Happy dance!
It all started with me first being able to squeeze out a hundred words or so yesterday. I'm starting a new chapter so it's all weird and scary at the moment and I have no real structure to work with yet. As I agonised with the lack of existing structure, Sandra imparted some of her wisdom on me. Just write for an hour and a half in the morning - no references, no email, no searching for articles. Then the rest of the day you can edit, add references etc without feeling guilty about not doing everything at once because - hey presto! - you've already written the day's quota.
Now, I would bet Sandra's a my perceptions of what count as morning vary, so I substituted "start of the day" instead of "morning", and "1000 words" for "an hour and a half", because 1000 words is my entirely irrational magic number. And it worked - I just started writing and was genuinely impressed at how much I knew about the subject. Of course, having just gone through a mountain of ILL books on precisely this topic helped. So then, after an afternoon of other things (that I did not feel guilty about!) I started putting in the references, tweaking things - and ended up with another 1000 words! I can't tell you how pleased I am with myself right now.
And on that note, I propose tomorrow to be official Sandra Appreciation Day.