I sat at my laptop for about 3 hours last night, after spending the prior 3 hours finishing up Patti's latest press release and finalizing the text of her author interview. I stared at the screen. I stared through the screen. I went back and re-read everything written to-date towards NaNo - which is to say, I read the very few pages (like 15-ish?) I've actually written. I re-read my outlining notes for DNA, the piece I'm working on for NaNo. I checked my email, my Facebook and my MySpace. I checked in with my women's group on iVillage. I checked the weather in Scranton for the weekend. And then I stared some more.
Nothing.
About 2 AM, I reached into my work bag and withdrew the notebook I'd used when writing longhand on last week's flight home from MSP. I went back and read through everything I'd handwritten, although I've already transcribed it into my Word document.
And then...I wrote. So apparently, my brain just isn't into the whole typing my story for NaNo bit...but when I put a pen in my hand, it just freaking flowed. I wrote for about an hour, got about 1500 words on paper (I compulsively count words everytime I finish the back and front of a page...part of my anal-ness, I guess)...and then went to bed to salvage a few hours sleep before getting up to come to work this morning.
Not sure what that's all about...my hand'll fall off if I try to write an entire novel longhand, but I guess, for now, with the typing my story completely not working out for me, I'll continue to give it a try! It's funny...I wrote like 4000 words for other stuff - PR, interview, blog posts, etc....last night as well...no problem with typing all of that! Just couldn't do it with fiction.
Weirdness.
Happy Tuesday, ya'll!
Tiffany
P.S. The BAD NEWS on my writing last night is that while reading over what I'd already written, I found a chunk of it to be extremely superfluous - apparently I felt the need to state and restate descriptions - and so I cut a chunk. So my word count is DOWN. Argh, Argh, Argh. In my own crazy mind (and on the spreadsheet I'm now using), I figure I can still "win" at NaNo if I write 2500 or so words per day for the rest of the month and don't strike anything else. But jeez!
Whatever gets the words out of your head! Don't stress. It'll be much easier to go back and type handwritten words into Word, than to stare at nothing! You're doing great!
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