Day 17 and progress is happening! I’m not entirely pleased with any of it but the first draft is the first draft and I have to remind myself of that every few minutes. No one uses their first draft, right?
I’ve been trucking along this NaNoWriMo and feeling great, for the most part. As long as I continue to shut up that small voice in my head telling me the story drags, things need to start happening, nothing is really working out all together….
It’s amazing how self-sabotaging writers can be. I’m sure that sounds very biased but truly, I don’t think I’ve met a single writer that hasn’t, at far more than one point in their writing careers, sabotaged themselves with doubting what they’re doing, questioning every word, every punctuation mark, every plot twist. Sometimes going as far as to throw the whole thing out and say, “Nope! Not doing this!”
Stephen King threw Carrie in the garbage, Vladimir Nobokov set fire to Lolita, Harper Lee let the To Kill a Mockingbird fly out the window. Luckily all of these people had supporters in their corner that recognized brilliance when they saw it and were able to save the now massively popular manuscripts.
Kind of makes me wonder if my husband would stop me from feeding any writing I reject in a moment of self-disgust the sheep or goats. I’d probably do so one page at a time, reading each page and listing off why I hate it before handing it off to Abe and letting him wash it down with my tepid coffee. Because nothing’s better than a “I fed my first draft to my goats” story on the heels of a best seller. 😀
I’m hopeful that once I get past the necessary slow-burn to the action, that things will move along at a much faster clip. I can guarantee this book will top out over 50k. The following two in the series will probably do the same.
For everyone else out there going for NaNoWriMo this year, good luck to you all! Keep the inner voices quiet, the fingers flying and the coffee/tea hot! I’ll hopefully see you on the other side!
The Writing Mom 