With my brain finally responding to stimuli again, I haven’t quite caught up with the straight line that indicates the words needed every day to make 50,000 before month’s end but I wrote more today than I did the last two days and more than what the NaNoWriMo site says was required for me to finish on time. So I’m happy. My story is progressing, though I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to run out of story before I reach 50,000 words. Which means what I’m writing is more a novella.
With all that in mind, I’ve reached a new appreciation of what it takes to be a professional novelist, one of those people who treat it the correct way (like a career, not just art) and write almost every day. In other words, it’s a job to them. Having to pump out the required words every day… phew.
Procrastination keeps rearing its ugly head, suggesting all kinds of different things for me to do to distract me from writing. Including writing these blog posts, which I have restricted to only writing after I have reached my word quota for the day.
If the muse takes me, I’ll gladly keep writing much more than my daily word quota. It’s not like I’m reaching the required words for a day and then “OK, stop!” Except it does kinda feel like that, because something in me keeps fighting off the idea that I should succeed at this. It’s a weird feeling. Some part of me is saying “Why are you doing all this hard work? Give up. There’s no point.”
Well, there is a point. I’m doing it for one important reason: because I can. Because I have to know. Or, to quote that old saying: because it’s there.
I am determined to do this. It’s just a pity that determination does not always translate so well into putting words on paper.