The Six Ws… or, What Went Wrong, and What Went Write… ha!
I had planned to do the novel writing month for a while, but it wasn’t until October 31 that I really convinced myself that it was going to happen. I was tempted to give up before I started, thinking it would be too hard–blah, blah, blah–but then I remembered how much I hyped myself up for it, and started thinking about how many other times I’ve said I was going to do something and then didn’t.
Then, I started to think about everyone else who says they are going to do something and then doesn’t. It happens all the time. Did I want to be one of those people?
I knew this was it. I was going to use the month of November to prove to myself that I could actually write something decent of some significant length. I want to be a writer — and if I chickened out before it started, well, it would become quite clear that a writer is just not what I am. At that point, I made a deal with myself: if I didn’t do it, no more writing, ever. (This might seem harsh or unreasonable, but I was going to let myself off the hook. It would mean I could allow myself to stop feeling guilty whenever an idea didn’t get written.)
So on November 1 I actually sat down and wrote, and it didn’t go well but I kept at it. As the week went on I realized it wasn’t as hard as I thought and I managed to stay above the daily word count goals.
The second week was harder, and third was torture. The fourth was sporadic, until it fizzled out over Thanksgiving weekend and I got stuck at the 40,000 word mark until yesterday, when the month ended and I was 10,000 words short of the goal.
So if the deal to myself was that zero words in November meant I could no longer pursue writing, and 50,000 meant I was on my way… once again, I’m left somewhere in the middle. Which is hard for me to deal with.
1. I’m glad you’re blogging again, even if intermittently. (No pressure to continue..)
2. Being in the middle can suck when writing, but I think sometimes it’s a good thing because it’s better than not being anywhere at all in your writing.
3. I’m not sure if i’m supposed to comment on the post about the man in jail for 30 years that was falsely proven guilty b/c the comments were disabled…BUT…I’m glad you said what you did about it meaning that people could sweep it under the rug because he was so nonchalant about it, I didn’t think about it like that. I do think that his answer may be his way of coping with the situation and it’s easier for him to “not be angry” and live his life to the fullest rather than waste him time being angry for the rest of his life. I mean I’d be pissed too, but it might be wasting precious time.