You may notice if you look back at the day 1 post with the counter widget that today my word count hasn't gone up much. That's not really accurate. The counter only reflects what I wrote TODAY.
Early in the October planning process, I was caught between two plots. Definitely something to be grateful for now, because I was struggling ridiculously with the one I chose, and sometimes fighting myself to get to work on it. Worse? It felt boring to me. I picked something outside my usual style, genre, and medium to be a challenge, but maybe going toward all three was a little much. Plus idea #2 has been nibbling away at me for DAYS. Unlike the first NaNo idea, it hasn't petered out this week. Fortunately it was still early, and after reading what I'd written so far, I decided to try switching ideas today.
What a difference that made! I wrote over 4K words today. I wrote more today than I've managed to squeeze out in the previous three days.
I'm going to have to push hard to make up the gap in words that restarting 4 days in has made, but it's definitely worth it. Sometimes taking a step back and looking at the options in front of you is a good idea. And in this case, it definitely is.
I feel rather flaky with this year's NaNo project, which is almost funny, because usually I'm the opposite. I get too attached to an idea or character, and it takes me longer to see it needs to be cut or changed. Hopefully coming from the opposite side in this project will help me find some good balance in future writing projects.
Tonight, NaNoWriMo.org featured the pep talk from Mercedes Lackey which is an amazing read and unlike many published authors, not disparaging of authors who aren't working on original projects. I have to agree with her, because I also feel fanfic makes excellent practice work. And my chosen field leaves very little room to talk, to be frank. TV writing has us break in by writing spec scripts, which when you boil it down, aren't all that much more than fanfic. Okay, granted, it's not the kind of fanfic featuring gratuitous sex and such, but it is formatted, gen, fic in a way.
I also decided to work today at Starbucks, because minimizing distractions is good. There was no, "I could just go clean this" or "Hmm, you know I haven't seen last week's Merlin" (I still haven't by the way, no spoilers!) just a nice green tea, my headphones, and air conditioning. Not usually essential, but it was over 90 degrees in LA today. Frak you, global warming.
Day four... let's just say it kicked my ass hard, so I started kicking ass back. Here's hoping the momentum remains through day five!
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