I feel incredibly accomplished at reaching the half-way point of this project. I gave myself lots of pats on the back when the word count crossed the 25,000 mark. It’s like climbing a mountain (sort of, I guess), because if you’re half-way through your journey that means it’s all downhill from there. “The worst is over,” and all that. So, yay.
“The worst,” in that sense, has been one of the biggest obstacles in the way of this goal: that little voice in my head that says whatever I’m writing is total crap. Chris Baty, who started the whole NaNoWriMo thing, wrote sort of a pep-talk book you’re supposed to read the month before (which I did), and he calls this voice “your inner editor.”
It’s much easier said than done, but once you “fire” this inner editor it’s a lot easier to write, and the more you write the eaiser it is to get further and further away from the voice until a new one comes along that’s even a little encouraging. I’m happy to say that’s happened for me.
I’ll rekindle with the more cynical inner editor on December 1st, but right now I want to celebrate the half-way point by posting another excerpt before he gets back and calls it total crap.
Click here — it’s a PDF this time, with copy protection enabled, because someone told me I better do that else some shady character comes along and claims my work as his own. So you can’t print it or export it into Word… but you should be able to at least read it. I mean, that’s the goal. So if you can’t, please let me know.
This picks up about 17 hours after Clay has been trapped in the elevator, or about 10 hours after the first excerpt (I think). Don’t worry too much about spoilers, because a lot will change in the re-write, and the only thing that’s really given away at the end of this is that Clay is having a rough time in there.
Thanks for reading!
