I hit 50,000 words on my current work-in-progress today. It’s a pretty big milestone. The end is actually in sight (though I have a feeling I may exceed my 75,000 word target, which is fine). I didn’t crawl across the 50k line either. The last couple of writing sessions have been, well, the kind of writing that you think writing is like when you’re not a writer. Or perhaps when you are a writer who hasn’t written in a very, very long time.
The rest of us know that often having written is more fun than writing. For the longest time, I felt like that made me a phony, a fake lover of the written word, or some nonsense like that. I’m older and wiser now, at least when it comes to things like that.
Writing is work, and it’s okay for work to be difficult.
Sometimes, it really is fun. Today was like that, for both of my writing sessions. I had uninterrupted time (a rare luxury for a stay at home mother, I assure you). I knew where my scene was going. Better, my scene went off the road in a way that surprised me, while still tying up strands of plot that I was unsure what to do with.
It was magical. I don’t type properly at all, but I’m very quick, and today I felt like a concert pianist. The clackity-clack of my ThinkPad was absolute music to me. The words piled up and before I knew it I was 700 words past my goal. I only stopped because my daughter woke from her nap, demanding breastmilk!
Most of my writing sessions are nothing like this. Most of the time, I’m aching over the last 200 words I’m trying to finish, no word is right, I hate the plot, I hate the characters, it’s all worthless. Except it isn’t. Every word is practice. Every word represents me being a better writer than I was yesterday. That’s enough.
And hey, maybe the book will turn out okay, too.
