NaNoWriMo, November 2019, DAY 5 – 2250 words
Dear Diary,
I voted today. I worked on my business. I took a yoga class with BlackLion at our favorite studio, and we made “breakfast for dinner” together afterwards.
And yeah – I wrote some more words. BlackLion and I did another word sprint, and then I just kept going afterwards, and ended up with a nice word count. I’m focusing more on the word count than the quality of what I’m actually writing, because I’m still not solid about this book’s ending. But I know that I can fix it during revision time, so I’m not worrying about it too much.
Reward for my writing session? Reading some more of Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. Such a great series! His world-building is fantastic.
DAY 6 – 1706 words
Dear Diary,
I was feeling kind of “off” today. I got a lot of biz stuff done, and some work for my part-time gig at the radio station, too. We went to Mom & Dad’s for the weekly family dinner. When I came home, the only thing I really wanted to do was go to bed.
But BlackLion urged me on, again, so I decided to write at least a little. I found an email from the local southern Maine NaNo leader saying she was running some word sprints on Discord (a cool app where you can chat with others who have interests in common). So BlackLion and I jumped on and did short word sprints with them for a little over an hour, and I ended up writing a bit more than the daily target. Again, the quality may be lacking – a lot of the scene was just conversation, which seems a bit boring, perhaps – but I can fix it later.
Also, Black Lion finished writing book 2 of his sci-fi trilogy tonight and is on to book 3. Celebrating with him! (In spirit, anyway – I’m taking my tired body to bed).
DAY 7 – 1910 words
Dear Diary,
I woke up with a cold. This is my body’s way of telling me to slow down. So I did. I’ve been sitting in the comfy recliner with my laptop, surrounded by books and journals. Percy cat has been keeping close tabs on me; he’s a healer. I had leftover soup for breakfast.
A bonus to slowing down is that I wrote in my journal, and came up with some new thoughts and ideas for book 3.
I took a nap this afternoon, and when I was waking up, still in that liminal space between dreaming and waking, I heard my own voice, dictating a story as part of my dream. I remembered that, at heart, stories are what it’s all about, for me. That’s been the case since I was a little girl. It reassured me that I can do this novel-writing thing, and do it well, even when I don’t have it planned out in advance, like I do with my non-fiction books. Perhaps especially then, though that remains to be discovered.
So I had some more soup for dinner, homemade vegetarian split pea this time, and waited for BlackLion to get home. We wrote, and again I got a good word count – and this time, I’m a little bit more satisfied with the content, too.
Oh, and I finished reading Oathbringer, which was amazing. Sick days aren’t all bad.
