Good words last night, along with surprising action as my MC remembers something horrible that shaped her life, and decides to fight for survival.
I’m stunned to realized that working at this ambling, casual pace, I’m already over 20,000 words, and that if I were planning a normal-length book, I’d already be 20% done.
This is something I’ve forgotten over the years, and am delighted to remember. If you aren’t just teeth-grittingly desperate to get paid again, you can write even small amounts, and so long as you do it regularly, you’ll rack up an impressive word count in very little time.
What I’m doing now is amateur writing (amateur in the Latin root-word sense, amator, which means lover). I’m writing out of simple love of doing it.
This is the way anyone who loves to write can write a book. Last night I ended up working on website fixes, so only had about half an hour to actually write before I fell over in an incoherent blob right around midnight. There have been a couple of nights when I got my words in fifteen or twenty minutes, decided I liked my stopping place, and quit for the night.
Writing does not have to be an all-consuming labor of ten- to sixteen-hour days—something that’s beginning to edge its way back into my weary brain as personal truth, rather than abstract theory.
It can be play, rather than work. And you can still love the story that’s coming together.
And on that note, I have a long week planned next week. And my older son is on leave, and going to come visit for a few days before he takes off for another stint in the desert. So I’m going to knock off at noon and call it a day.
Have a wonderful weekend.
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