Hey, fellow NaNo-ers!

Believe it or not, November is already half over. How are you doing on your goal(s)?

As of yesterday (14 November), I was 2/3 of the way to my personal goal of 15,000 words.

I’ve actually been able to use a lot of the “awful” stuff I wrote years ago, the last two times I tried to write this story. That’s one of the main reasons I printed it all out before I started, so I could do this:

Which turned into this:

Even on days like today, when I know I have some old stuff to copy/paste over into a new document and revise/rewrite into my current draft, it’s still hard to make myself sit down at the computer to do it. And then that makes me sad, because I shouldn’t have to make myself write—I should want to write. And then when I do, I know that it’s not very good and so I get caught up in a negative loop of self-doubt and anxiety.

And then I remind myself that I’m already making so much progress because of the tiny bit of work I did four or five years ago on this story. So if I work through it now, figure out the characters and conflict as I go and get an entire draft finished, then—in the NEXT draft—I’ll have a whole lotta stuff already written that I can use. And I have learned that I do prefer the revision process to the writing process most of the time anyway. So I have to give myself something to work with!

How is your writing going this month?