So, today, having a day off with good rest… I completed the Double Scene experiment I’d come up with over a week ago. I woke up today, edited heavily, then waited for a few hours and got a second session in. And it didn’t feel like I was straining at any point; I didn’t have to slog through the scene I just wrote–I only had to be careful about writing it before I got tired (or drunk–I got wine and pie for Thanksgiving).
But, of course, I did have to write a second post today, because I realize that, now, in the final stretch, I have to go in hard on the new writing schedule: wake up really early, write before I go to work, then write a post when I get home. That meant posting twice today, or else 30 Days would actually be 29 Days.
It’s weird to think that I only figured out this schedule now, on the home stretch of NaNoWriMo 2016. One more week, and then it’s back to silently toiling away with my writing projects.
Which just means that I’m going to be continuing to write this novel (because hitting pause part way through a novel is like sending it out to die; there’s no way you’ll return to it in the same state-of-mind, with the same feelings and intentions). Already, it’s a huge contrast to 30 Days 1; at the end of my first NaNoWriMo, I had a complete novel that needed a lot of work.
Now, having written three books–two of which were terrible–it’s nice to be confident about the progress I’ve made on a new novel. Confident… and tolerant about how I make that progress. Because, for a while, I was caught up worrying that I wouldn’t be able to write something that I liked more than Memory—that it was going to be the one project I cling to desperately. That I’d keep throwing it at publishers, hoping it would get picked up. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to write something new. And I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that a lot of writers probably have fears like these at one point or another.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m grateful that, at least for tonight, I can just smile about the novel I’m working on. Tonight, I get to be excited. I’m back to loving what I do instead of being afraid of it.
And that’s worth 30 days of hard work.
Words for the Day: 659
NaNoWriMo Total: 9,910
House of Error 