826 words yesterday. Slightly less than half of the daily mileage I need to actually hit the 50K in a month goal.
I’m trying to tell myself that I can easily make that up, but I’m also starting to feel the anxious energy that kills me every year. So today I’m going to go to yoga and I’m going to drink herbal tea and try to relax. I will be writing, and I will be trying to reach 1670 words today, but the words that matter are today’s words, not yesterday’s.
Yesterday’s problem, though, was the same as always: I’m not a discovery writer. I’m a discovery thinker. I’ve got great things planned for this story and the fun of playing with lots of characters that I know well, but a sentence can take me a while, because it has to be the right sentence for the character. Yesterday, I wrote one great description. The hero sees Grace and thinks that her eyes are the color of army drab. Those two words took me at least an hour. But felt perfect when I was done with them. Unfortunately, two perfect words don’t add up very quickly.
This morning I realized why I was stuck with Rose and came up with her character’s conflict in this story. She likes having company around, never does see much of a need for ghosts to move on. But today I need to go back and review A Gift of Time and make sure that her character hasn’t already developed beyond that. That time will not be word creation time, but it’s important to the story.
One of my dogs is grumbling. Dreaming, maybe? Time to check on her, make myself another cup of tea, and get started. For Day Three, I’m going to try being Zen instead of being determined, because determination didn’t get me that far.
If it was easy to pound out 1666 words a day, more people would hit the Nano goal. I know it’s easy to say “don’t stress about it”. If getting the right two words made you happy, then you’re still moving forward. I feel like it’s really all about daily progress, and not necessarily how MUCH progress. 🙂
So you don’t hit 1670 words – still you wrote words. What if you accomplish nothing more than writing every day for 30 days?
Your sentences thing made me laugh. I may have asked you this before but have you ever read how Tom Robbins writes? (I swear I wrote a whole blogpost on this but I just wasted time trying to find it and – no go.) Anywho – he writes in “shimmering sentences”. He writes and rewrites each sentence until it shimmers for him. I kid you not. And, really, he was pretty darn prolific. And, of course, funny.
Oops – sorry. I responded before reading your response to my comment yesterday. Keep pushing yourself the way you need to then, dearie. Just don’t give up.