Practice

In an effort to prepare myself for NaNoWriMo and the daunting task of throwing together another novel, I decided to make myself practice. I've set myself a 2000 word a day target for November, so I'll hopefully end up with a novel closer to 60K than 50K. So as an exercise, I decided to see how long it took me to write 2000 words. I know from doing flash fiction contests that I can get through 1000 in half an hour or so, but there is a big difference between a 1K story and a 2K story.

So I sat down to write. I had a prompt to work with, so that helped. And the story just came. One hour and ten minutes later I had my 2K story. In fact, 2040 words.

So I'm relieved. I know it will be harder when I'm midway through a book, and my characters won't go where I want them to, or do the things I need them to do, but at least I know it is possible. And on those days where everything is perfect, the stars are aligned just so, and the words just seem to be there to pluck from the air, well, maybe I'll be able to get through twice that. Then on those other days, where you just can't find it in you to even sit in front of the keyboard, I'll still be okay.