Steady

I've been keeping steady with some words each day. However, a number of days since the 23rd have had very low word counts, which has dragged my daily average and mood down a bit. My husband reminded me last week to focus on why I write.

The why of it is that I enjoy sharing these ideas floating about in my head. At least I like to put them into a form and then pour it out onto the page. I enjoy manipulating the different ideas and trying to fit the pieces together so that they make sense and so that there can be some character and plot development. Right now I'm learning how to write a romance, which leads to a lot of starts and stops as I realize my mistakes and then want to rewrite to get it better. As Julia Cameron notes in her book, The Artist's Way, you can't get better while looking good.

However, this desire to get better is warring with my desire to just get through draft 1. Roz Morris (in Nail Your Novel) promotes writing out the first draft without worrying about editing. It certainly will help you get to that finished product faster, but it counts on you getting that original outline/plan for the story right. Or at least shutting up your brain so you can get through it until the end.

And so I continue to try to fix and move on at the same time, and it's probably leaving me a bit scattered on focus. I could argue for either approach, although the mature decision is likely to just take notes and keep on going based on the new decision/goal.

And on that note, I'm heading back to writing.