He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. —Psalm 113:9

November 22, 2010

Why It's a Good Idea to Write Every Day

Thanks to the combination of busy-ness and a tired brain, I didn't write anything on my novel Thursday, Friday or Saturday of last week. When I stopped writing Wednesday night, I had good momentum, a good idea of where to go next, and excitement about getting back to it. By the time Sunday rolled around, I had lost all of that, and Sunday's write-in was an exercise in pure frustration. I still managed to add another 3,000 words to my word count before the library kicked us all out, but they were forced and awkward and not nearly as good or cohesive as what I would have written had I kept up my momentum, something that even writing just a hundred or so words a day would have done for me.

As if that wasn't enough difficulty to deal with, when I sat down before the write-in on Sunday to try to get my head back into the story, all I could think about instead were possible ways to fix the problems with The Hero Factor, the urban fantasy WIP I've been tinkering away on for years and finally stuck in a drawer earlier this year. And now I'm starting to get excited about that story again--much more excited than I am about my current NaNoWriMo project. Even so, I'm going to stick with my current novel draft till the end of the month, because I won't know if it's salvageable if I don't finish it. Hopefully I'll find its groove again, and this time I won't lose it by taking such a long break. Either way, I now need to write 2,245 words per day in order to hit 50,000 by the deadline. Guess I'd better get to it, then.

1 comment:

DavidRM said...

You're upset that you only managed 3000 words? Or that you had to "force" them?

The way I look at, 3000 words is a good day's effort. Forced or easy, I say, "Rockin'". =)

And in a few weeks when you look back, you won't be able to spot the difference between the words that came easy and those that came hard.

-David

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