I’m managing to stay just a little ahead of the game at 25,000 words. I’m half way there and I’ve got all the symptoms. What if I run out of story before I hit 50,000? What if I fall out of love with my characters or something unforseen happens to them that I didn’t expect or want and I end up having to write about it? Don’t I have other projects I should be paying attention to? However, I will keep pushing to 50. I’m fresh out of prompts until next month, so scroll back through my blog and use one you missed from a prior week. Instead of prompts, I’ll keep updating you on my nano progress. A friend of mine is whizzing through this like it’s cake and I’m starting to get both jealous and competitive. 🙂
From Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of A Writer: Life, Craft, Art:
“The practicing writer, the writer-at-work, the writer immersed in his or her project, is not an entitity at all, let alone a person, but a curious melange of wildly varying states of mind, clustered toward what might be called the darker end of the spectrum: indecision, frustration, pain, dismay, dispair, remorse, impatience, outright failure. To be honored in midstream for one’s albor would be ideal, but impossible; to be honored after the fact is too late, for by then another project has been begun, another concatenation of indefinable states. Perhaps one must contend with vaguely warring personalities, in some sort of sequential arrangement?–perhaps premonitions of faliure are but the sould’s wise economy, in not risking hubris?–it cannot matter, for, in any case, the writer, however battered a veteran, can’t have any real faith, any absolute faith, in his stamina (let alone his theoretical “gift”) to get him through the ordeal of creating, to the plateau of creation. One is frequently asked whether the process becomes easier, with the passage of time, and the reply is obvious: Nothing gets easier with the passage of time, not even the passing of time.
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Some past posts to keep you making time:
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone