Chronicling my embarkation into my own personal world of writing. I do not have a destination in mind. My only hope is to make some sense of this compelling desire to create with words.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Day 4 -- 6,723 Words Total - ON TRACK

If I hadn’t said it already, this is an extremely difficult goal. I am proud to say that I am on track after four days. It has NOT been easy, especially when dealing with the guilt of leaving my wife and mother-in-law sitting without me in the living room so I could write.

I’ve done ten marathons in the last 6 years. This feels harder than a marathon psychologically. The difference is that I train for my marathons usually in 18-week increments leading up to the race. Not in the case of this writing marathon.

I am getting the words down. I can’t say everything flows together. In fact, I am skipping around from scene idea to scene idea. I haven’t figured out yet if and how what I have written will comprise a cohesive plot. I am sticking to my outline, but my outline was fairly loose.

I found an approach that works for me. I picked a particular scene that I knew I wanted to write and took a blank screen. I gave myself 60 mintes to free write on that scene. The rule is “DON’T DELETE OR EDIT”. I knocked out 1,000 words in 54 minutes. Some of it is good quality writing, most of it – well, who knows…

I’m feeling the excitement of the NaNoWriMo journey. Keep writing!

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