blah blah blah

So I’m just coming into my last week of NaNo and am currently ahead of the game on 43000. And I’m rocketing between finding it quite easy, and finding it very difficult indeed.
One thing is for sure, I am obsessed with my word count. It can’t be healthy. But I’m fast approaching land, the end is in sight, yada yada yada.
What I hadn’t expected from my marathon word sprint is how physically exhausting it would be. My shoulders ache, I’m absolutely shattered, my ring finger on my left hand no longer co-operates and won’t hit the keys like it used to, my bones seem to be cracking more than they did in October.
On the plus side, my confidence has improved, although I am only a third of the word length of what will be my finished manuscript, it suddenly seems that much closer. Instead of talking myself out of writing, I am talking myself into it, and my previous mental see-saw that had self doubt being the fat kid on one end with skinny little self confidence way up high on the other, now sees self confidence eating cakes whilst his frenemy is on some sort of horrid cabbage soup diet.

I’m still having my moments, of course I am, but I'm getting better, which is great.

I’ve also realised that I am not the kind of writer that sits down and writes a story. I am in awe of anyone who can write a novel in one go (and that’s where I’ve gone wrong in the past, I’ve expected to sit down and write 200 consecutive pages of winning prose – impossible!) I write a massive great big mess that is a tangle of words. I don’t know how it will end or how everything will tie together, and I’m note even sure if it’s the story that I started with, but I will get there by next weekend, for sure. At 40,000 words I figured out the motivation for my murderer, but I had to write through those words in order to find it, it wasn’t just going to be there for the taking at the start, that would be too easy. And yes, there are lots of bits that don’t fit together now, but they will. I have a feeling that my re-write is going to use up a lot of post-it notes, and I don’t think I have enough wall space in the study for a time-line, but I hope that I will have enough space in the hall…

My other realisation is that it hasn’t been an impossible task. I mean, yes, there have been days (like today!!) when I haven’t wanted to write, and yes, there have been days when I haven’t written and have had to play catch-up, but if I had written for all of those days, and if all weekends had been as productive as last weekend, then I could have written an awful lot more. I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that I don’t suffer from writers block, as I conveniently thought for the last eight years, but instead I am just incredibly lazy. Next NaNo, I’m going to set myself a higher target, and I’m excited about it already.

The other thing I am excited about is reaching the end, and then doing something else. Like reading a book. I haven’t read anything this month, and I’m starting to miss it. And I want to work on some short stories. I finally sent one off to Fiction Feast today, which has only taken me about three weeks from actually having it finished but hey ho, I told you I was lazy.

Right, anyway, I’m off. I need to make the sandwiches for tomorrow, go and talk to the boyfriend if he hasn’t fallen asleep on the sofa (unlikely, he always falls asleep on the sofa, and he’s watching the match so I think sleep is like an inner defence mechanism so as not to feel embarrassment at poor play or silly yellow away shirts) and then I need to do some more procrastinating through the medium of watching I’m a Celebrity. I’m so pleased Joe is finally doing a task, I hope it makes him cry. Byeeeee!!! xx