Three Hours? I Don't Think So.

I don't believe this author tried her assignments before publishing this book. If her editor made her, then I think she chose intentionally shorter ones.
In the book, she says you should have about three to fours hours to dedicate to each day's assignment. Each day has its own assignment so essentially each assignment should take three to four hours, right?
Wrong. Since there have been a number of days that I have found myself in this situation, I'll just use my most recent moment as my example.
Day 14 (yes, I'm on Day 14 and I started this project in April). This is apparently day one of my novel. She says everything else was build-up and preparation, this is where we actually do work that is meant to be in our finished novel. This day's assignment is three parts. The first part is writing 20 different first lines for our novel. 20 different ways to begin our novel. The second part is focusing on "Act One" of the story and listing five scenes (and their summaries) we think would be in there. Finally, the third part is choosing one of those scenes and actually writing it.
First off, I ran out of first lines once I got to number six. I managed to list 15. This probably took me an hour, possibly two. Then I came up with five scenes I knew had to be included because I had already written the outline at the start of this project because I was confused. I then summarized them each, briefly. By this point, Starbucks was closing and I had been in there writing for over two hours. I decided to leave the final part for the next day (today).
At five o'clock I entered Starbucks and chose the scene I wanted to write. I chose the very first scene of the novel which meant I had to choose which first line I was going to use. My number eight fit so well with the setting of my first scene that I didn't stress out about which first line to use at all (Thank goodness I kept coming up with ideas after I was stumped at number six).
At 7:53 I realized I really needed to wrap it up because this particular Starbucks closes at eight every night. So it took me three hours to write this scene even when I had the beginning figured out (the hardest part is starting as far as I'm concerned), a general idea of where I wanted the scene to go and every character's purpose in that scene. This book is designed for those who don't even have an idea of what to write when they begin. I had so much of an idea I created an outline, knew my characters' general personalities, and it still took me three hours. Add that to the, minimum, two hours I spent the day before and that's a total of, again minimum, five hours on one day's assignment.
If this were the first assignment I had run into that was like this, I wouldn't be writing this post. Frankly, there are about three other assignments that called for writing a scene that I just flat-out ignored for one reason or another and this still isn't the first assignment I've come across that takes longer than three hours to finish. The assignment on character biographies took me five days to finish. Each character took about an hour because of the list of detailed questions which was two pages long.
Don't misunderstand my venting. These assignments have been incredibly helpful. The character biographies in particular forced me to understand my characters in ways I hadn't considered would be relevant. I'm just saying the estimation is off. Way off.

Beginning the Novel

So this is it. I'm at the part in the book where I apparently start writing the novel instead of doing lots of character bios, making decisions about the plot, P.O.V., etc. And I'm stalling.
I don't know. I guess I haven't written scenes in so long that it feels difficult now, which is ironic because the only way I knew how to write before was by writing the whole thing out scene-by-scene.
Did you know one of the most common misused words is the word "ironic?" I have no idea if I'm using it correctly up there but, if I'm not, I'm letting you know I know it's supposed to mean something that's similar to what everyone thinks it means, but not exactly.
Back to the novel. I have all of the character bios done and the story has taken shape since. The message/plot started out being one thing years ago, then transformed to reflect events in my life at the time and now it's back to the original message/plot which I personally think is more appropriate. I can get out my feelings on earlier events in a far more... I have no clue. It's just not going to be this book.
Have you ever thought about how ridiculous the English language is? I mean, for example, the word "though." Why was the "ugh" even added. "Tho" is perfectly legible, easier to pronounce, and there isn't another word like it. Not having the "ugh" would certainly make it less likely for sleep deprived college students from mistakenly typing "though" instead of "through." They don't even sound similar and yet they end the same way. You throw in the word "enough" and you really want to say "ugh!"
I don't know why this is becoming such a big deal. Probably because it is a big deal. Stories take time to write which I know very well. I've never finished one. I had twenty-two chapters written for a story freshman year of high school and it wasn't even close to being done. That was just part one.... I really should have kept that thing but I think years later I looked at it like "yeah, this isn't mature enough" but I could have saved it. It was a very different story! At least I haven't seen anything like it yet and considering I wrote that over ten years ago there's been a lot of time for someone else to think of it.
Is there a council we can take the problem with "though?" Because I really think it's about time we change it. Especially with Twitter and text messaging- those three extra letters can cost money!