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I finished my 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month on Thursday night. I still had a few scenes to rough out to get to the end of the story but I finished that over the rest of the weekend.

I learned that if you just sit down and start, it’s not nearly as bad as you think. The hard part is starting – getting over the fear of trying something, and the fear that it won’t be nearly as good as you envision it in your mind. That fear can make cleaning the oven look good in comparision. But if it always stays in your mind, it will never become real. That’s true whether it’s writing or sculpture or jewelry or any creative endeaveor.

And making time when you don’t have much was difficult, but that’s true about anything.

I made my goal and I printed out the whole thing just so I could look at all the paper it took up Actually, I’ll use it for editing later on but I want to go back and finish my other story first. In the meantime, I’m not even going to reread what I wrote.

I have no idea how good or bad it is at this point, but I’m not sure that matters. What matters is that I did it. And that seems to matter a great deal.

I’m gradually getting used to the extra hours at work, and I’m just barely keeping up with the minimum word counts for NaNoWriMo. I’m at about 37000 words, and trying to get over a cold.

10+ hours straight at work, about 1.25 hours commute time, 8 hours of sleep, an hour to get ready in the morning… That leaves less than 4 hours out of the day for everything else – writing, eating, errands, spending a bit of time with my husband, etc. Forget housework – I certainly have

But I will not give up! I’m gonna make that stupid 50,000 words this month if I have to type in excerpts from the phone book.

I don’t think it would do much for my plot – especially since they don’t usually have phones in pseudo-medieval fantasy, but hey, it’s supposed to be the last refuge of the desperate. I’m not planning on sinking to that level though – unless it’s really, really necessary. Hmm, maybe a time portal opens and drops a phone booth back in time? Nope – that’s been done (see Bill & Ted)

And now back to my regularly scheduled story, where my heroine has just been accused of being a thief and threatened with having her hand cut off….

I’m halfway to the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in a month – two days ahead of time!

Now I just need to keep that buffer. Things like grocery shopping and real life seem to eat away at it quickly. But I’m in good shape.

I really think I’m going to do it. I wasn’t sure I could when I first started this whole thing. I wanted to try – any words I had at the end of the month would be more than I had before.

As the Little Engine That Could said, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”

Twenty three thousand words, almost halfway to my goal for the month, and I don’t know what happens next. Aacck! I just have to keep telling myself that this is a rough draft. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect this time around. I can always restructure it.

And it’s allowed to suck

This weekend has really helped. I needed 16670 words to stay on track for today, and I just passed 21000. Things are going well although I think my story has taken a twist from where I expected it to go. I was going to strand my princess in a peasant village for a month or so, with or without amnesia… But that doesn’t seem to be happening.

It could all still change tomorrow, but it looks like this may be a journey story instead. It should be interesting. I still don’t have a handle on the Princess’s character but I’m hoping she’ll develop one along the way. Once I know what it is, I can always go back in the revisions and make everything consistent.

I do rather regret the piglet I was going to have in the story though… It would have been cute.

I’ve just passed 15,000 words. It took me about four years with a few days now and then to get around to writing that much on the last book… And this was just eight days.

I’m sure it will get harder but this has been helpful already. It helped me see that the key to a rough draft is just writing it. I can always make it better later. I can find the time to write whenever I have to. Half an hour before breakfast, an hour after dinner, a bit more time on the weekends… That’s enough to make real progress.

And writing fast like this, with a concrete deadline, helps squish the procrastination bug. I can’t choose to do the dishes, or water the plants just because I can’t face the fear of my story not being as good as I want it to. I don’t have time. That does mean that the sink is filling up. (I’ve already killed most of the plants so you don’t have to feel too sorry for them.)

But it also means the story is carrying me along. I’m not overthinking it. I’m just writing. I did sit down ahead of time and figure out a rough idea of how the story might go and what the scenes might be. And I think I’m mostly following it. But I haven’t looked at that list of events and there have been some surprises already.

There are some decisions that I haven’t made yet about the story… But rather than stop writing until I make up my mind, I’m just going to keep writing and let my character decide how it goes when she dries out and wakes up.

I can always change my mind in the revisions.

10494 words and a reprieve! I don’t have to go in for jury duty on Monday after all. I’m still in the jury pool and they can call me whenever they want, but at least I’ll have Monday free

I’m a fifth of the way there and on schedule. It’s both easier and harder than I thought. It really only takes a couple hours per day but when you’re tired, it’s harder to sit down and start writing.

But I’m enjoying it too. My evil princess just gave the perfect princess’s maid the fantasy equivalent of poison ivy – narrowing the group down even further. Tune in next time when Forsythia gets swept away down the river and starts her own adventures

I got all my words for yesterday in the morning and took the evening off to do some grocery shopping and spend some time with my husband. (He’s such an awesome guy – he cleaned the kitchen and everything this morning.)

So, at 8631, I need to get to work for today