Dec 11, 2012

My writer friend wondered if writing this blog was taking me away from working on the book. I’ve come to realize that each day’s post acts as a warm-up exercise for the book. I am writing, but I don’t need to worry about structure or content too much, and this prepares me for the harder work of creating the novel. And whether I have progressed in the novel or not, I have put down some words in my allotted work time. This, I have come to realize, is important to me.

Today was a particularly difficult day to get going. First there were words with the teenager because he wouldn’t get up in time for school, then there were a couple of necessary phone calls to make and receive. If it wasn’t for the ease of writing the blog, I would find it hard to get into the mindset of working on the novel, especially since the next few chapters are completely unknown.

Finished Chapter 4 yesterday and hit a milestone of 5000 words (that took a paragraph in Chapter 5 to get to). Regardless of the quality of the words, this feels like a real achievement to me. I still can’t get over the feeling that this will end up as a pretty sub-par first book, but having seen plenty of those in the Kindle free section, I am okay with that for now!

More tomorrow.

If you have some tips to share or experiences of your own, please leave them here in the comments instead of FB so I can keep a record.