Clarion Write-a-thon Week 2 – the second 5000.
Words are dragging for me right now. I made my second 5000 words by dragging it out, 100 words at a time, as painfully as any job can be which involves you sitting at a desk with nice hot cups of tea and the internet to distract you every ten minutes.
I love my novel, I’m happy with it and I even know where it’s going, but despite fun scenes involving drunken brothers, enchantresses and governesses and bratty girl scientists aren’t inspiring me to drill out the words at what I consider a reasonable rate. For some reason I’m hiding from the book, though, and instead turned most of my writing attention this week to a long-neglected chapter of a co-writing project (we’re at the point where the plot has to make sense, ouch!), a children’s novel that’s been kicking my butt because research, a short story or two and a comic script.
Hey, I never said the 5000 words would be on the same project! (I hope I didn’t say that)
On the one hand, allowing myself to count the wordcount of all fiction projects isn’t encouraging me to stick to a single thing and bash at it until it’s done, but on the other hand, my brain is so flighty right now that if I forced myself to just write ONE thing, I think it would flutter away altogether. I’m not sure what’s going on – the obvious diagnosis is post-trilogy meltdown, but I’ve written a whole NOVEL since then, the Creature Court was put to bed from my point of view more than a year ago, so I don’t think it’s that.
What I want to be doing is editing, I think. And other writing related things. But not actually producing wordcount. Having said all that, there are so many things I WANT to get written this year, and if I let myself completely follow my own whims, I’ll have a couple of short stories and not much else to show for it. So I’m going to keep pushing my way through the Clarion Write-a-Thon plan, in the hope that I eventually do embrace my novel as she deserves, and afterwards I think I will collapse and look at some writing-support type work for a while, to refresh me before Nanowrimo comes my way. I think my original crazy plan of writing 200K this year might have to fall by the wayside.
Far more important that I write sustainably, don’t burn out my synapses, and that what I produce is publishable.
But oh, I am enjoying writing short stories on spec again. It’s been so very long…
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If you want to encourage my Clarion Write-a-thon campaign, please consider donating a little something in my name over here. All funds go towards the Clarion West writers workshops, a great cause!
