I know what you’re thinking. Two days in a row doesn’t really sound like a lot. But it must be a lot because I got a badge on the nanowrimo website. And really, one of the deepest yet somehow also most obvious insights I’ve ever had is that daily effort, even the most minor teeniest tiniest effort, is probably the most powerful. This kind of work is certainly more meaningful to me than anything that I power through in one sitting. For me, at least, whatever I complete in one long session (writing any kind of report, for example), tends to lose meaning after awhile. I start to just go through the motions. There are exceptions, of course. But overall, small and steady daily effort FTW.
A few notes on today’s session:
I was in a much better mood, partly because I had more sleep, I felt better than yesterday, and I have more time to write on Tuesdays.
I actually did have to stop writing before I reached my word-count goal for the day because I needed to make some decisions about the setting for this scene. It led me to sketch out the location (and I use the word sketch very loosely here), which in turn led me to get more ideas for world-building, etcetera. So even though that added maybe 45 minutes to my writing time but no fresh words to my word count, it was super rewarding. I also engaged in some light research on the web that was fun and generative.
As I write, my previous efforts to edit/revise my completed novels have made me conscious of elements in this first chapter that will need to change. I mean, some of what is happening here, at the start of the book, is just slow. It’s important to me, to my protagonist, and to my story, but when I revise, I will have to find a way to crank up the pressure, maybe move some conflicts upfront so the protagonist has to deal with that while absorbing this slower unfolding of tension that is occurring now.
I’m hoping this realization is a helpful one for me. I want to believe that I can make that fix later on. I also just don’t know how else to make sense of this novel but to write it out, find out what might happen, then revise it later to make a reader want to read it, too.
To my fellow writers, whatever you are working on this week, write on!
reader. writer. 