I did it! I wrote 50,000 words in November. 50,025 actually. And I have a decent first draft of my first full novel, and I like it!
I had a huge slack time in the middle of the month where I couldn’t seem to get much written, and it looked rather grim for this goal but then I committed myself to writing a lot over the weekend and in about 30 hours I wrote 20,000 words. I had plenty of breaks and a full night’s sleep in there too.
And the thing is? I felt GREAT. I didn’t get all muscle-sore from sitting too long typing. My brain didn’t fry. It was all good, just a logical progression through a storyline that wavered around through my head while I wrote. I enjoyed the process immensely.
Well, I did until I got to the last 1400 words and then I met with a wall of resistance so huge that I needed mountain climbing gear and some power snacks to scale it. At that point I really didn’t want to finish, to finish was to be able to judge it and to let it be judged, if I didn’t finish, I could just be working on it forever.
So, I called myself out on it and actually said aloud “Christine, this is resistance and you are not giving in to it. You can write for 5 minutes and then walk around for 5 but you will keep coming back to the screen until you are done.”
And then suddenly I was done and submitting my word count and seeing the winner’s screen come up. I was actually light-headed for a while, blissed out with accomplishment.
And then I wanted MORE.