The painful reality

I had a horrible writing night last night. I think I wrote 20 words. This is after I went upstairs to complain to my husband and to whine that "maybe I wasn't a writer." When I think about all the accomplished people, the thing that sticks out is that they worked hard to get where they are. How do I work hard to achieve success? By writing. But why is it so horribly painful? Excruciatingly, terribly awful. I am proud of what I write but getting there is like having my teeth pulled without novacaine. I actually had a dentist who filled a tooth without novacaine once when I was young.

Anyway, I am determined to do this year's NaNoWriMo. I am at approximately 3342 words. I didn't count last night's abomination. I did some math and determined that I have to write 2222 words a day until 11/30 to achieve 50,000. This is only an extra 555 more words a day.

I can do it. I will check in later with my word count.

Word count for Monday: 5565, so I am one up on my count (was to be 5564). I feel pretty good about writing tonight. I worked halfway through, then took the dog, and came back and finished. If all writing sessions went this easy!

Writing habits

A couple of posts ago, I talked about coming to terms with my writing habits and goals. I want to be a novelist, but am unsure if that means not having a day job? It would be really great to be able to travel for weeks at a time, but maybe I need the discipline.

I received The Writer yesterday, and there was an article titled "Writing on the Fly," by Sandra Hurtes. In it, authors talk about how they fit their lives around their writing. This excerpt stood out for me. Hurtes is talking about Stacy Sims, a Cinncinati writer and Pilates studio owner:

With two day jobs she's emotionally invested in, finding the time to fit her writing job in isn't easy. "I don't have an expectation that I will write every day," she says. "Except for revising my play, I haven't had time to write in two months." She reconnects with her writing by going away for short periods of time and writing nonstop. That means spending enough time with her character that they "tell me everything I need to know," she says.

She advises writers, "Don't waste time on unhealthy habits. like spending your time thinking about how you are not writing! Thoughts are energy and they can keep us stuck."

I think this is helpful and addresses the first part of my problem. The second part of my problem is more insidious and has to deal with the emotional aspect of writing. I have the following problems:

• Don't have anything to say.
  
• Am terrified of writing.
  
• I find it incredibly painful.
  
• Don't think I know enough about plot.

Even as I wrote those words, they sounded wrong. Am I really terrified? I don't know if I would say that, but I do feel anxious. I don't know what the answer is. It feels good to write about it though.

AWOL

I have been AWOL for the last five days but now am ready to get back into writing mode. According to my schedule, I should have 11,669 words written by the end of day today. I have 1,161, so I am 10,508 behind. I will have to add to my word count on a per diem basis. If I am not caught up by 11/15, I will have to revise my day-to-day totals.

And I am off to write. I will be back later with a word count.

OK. I wrote all night. I am at 3342. Still five days behind, but I feel pretty good. I am inspired for the future.

Word count 11/2

1,161 words total. The time changed last night so I am really tired. I came to a conclusion about my writing habits, but I will write on it later.

Word count 11/1

I have been trying to use the official NaNoWriMo website and it is really, really slow. So slow, that I can feel my frustration level rise. Instead of dealing with that ridiculous mess, I am going to post my word count on here. 673 words today. I am supposed to write 1,667 a day and I am already behind, but I am very tired and will make it up later.

Writing is incredibly hard and I am going to have to come up with some tricks to keep me focused on the task at hand. Or I could figure out how to solve my problem. I will work on it this month and blog about it.

NaNoWriMo begins

Today marks the start of National Novel Writing Month wherein the participants write a 50,000 word novel by Nov. 30. I have signed up and will do it. I'm pretty excited. I have had a story bumping around in my head for a couple of years. It will be nice to let it out on paper.

Also, I have looked back at this past year and all of the blown-off deadlines and I think that I have finally found something to get me motivated to send my book out and realize my author potential. My husband, Tim, is going to collaborate on a book, that will most surely be published, with a co-worker. Talk about motivation! So while I am immersing myself in word counts while being in the writing zone, I am going to finish my sample chapter and send my book out. It would be terrible if my non-writing husband had a book published before me, a writer. To be fair, I have had several articles published, but I have always wanted to be a novel writer. What better time than now?

Fall and new goals

You know that I am not the type to run from a problem, but I am one to run from a goal. I, for the past two months, have not done any writing whatsoever, besides stuff for work. I missed my goal of having my two chapters to send out. It always seems that as soon as I have a breakthrough (see last post), it is like giving me permission to stop writing.

I shouldn't be too hard on myself. I have been feeling really scattered without knowing the reason why. I have been doing other stuff, but I get that feeling that there are not enough hours in a day to get everything done. What is that? I don't know. Anyway, enough with the old. Here is the new.

My new goal is to have my second chapter finished by the end of October (next month) to send out in November. Also in November, I am going to participate in the NaNoWriMo. I haven't given up on last year's NaNoWriMo book bug I have a good idea of what I am going to write about this year. I have to review the rules, but I think you can have an idea, it just can't be written down or started.

I also want to start writing in my journal again. My last post was 8/12/08. So much better than it being 8/12/07! See how I have become an optimist?