109. what have I done?

Oh crap. So as for the NaNoWriMo thing (see blog 102, 106-108), I was thinking that I could write during my lunch break. And so today I tried an experiment. I wanted to see how much I could come up with in an hour (actually less, once I finish my sandwich).

(Now for those of you who know the rules of this NaNoWriMo, I'm not trying to get a head start on my novel. I was writing something else.)

Anyway, I tried to turn critical-mind off and just write but it ain't easy. Words come in like a bad cell phone connection. The ideas are trying to get through but they're all broken up and incomplete and the only way to make sense of the fragments is to stop typing and piece them together.

And then there are those words. Maybe only other writers can relate to this, but you get to a critical point in a sentence and you need a word to plug in but none of the ones your brain is picking out fit. And it sucks because you know what the rest of the sentence is supposed to say and you might even have the next sentence ready to go but the word just won't come and then the idea/inspiration you were riding starts to leave you behind like a train that won't wait and you can see it running off into the distance.

Of course I know I should just throw some boring, cliche word in as a filler and get on with it, but it's like pushing a turd into the space where a diamond should go. It feels like a betrayal.

So sometimes the right word appears, sometimes you push in the turd and hope you can catch up to the inspiration train. Sometimes you can, sometimes you have to wait for the next one to come along and hope it's as good as the one you let get away.

ANYWAY...

Anyway, my little lunch-break practice session netted a little story thing that weighed in around 480 words. The pace I need to maintain to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month is around 1,700 words per day. My little 480 word thing isn't even a third of the way there. If that pace keeps up, that means another two hours at home to make up for the rest of the 1,220 defecit.

Blah.

I didn't get to finish the story thing I was working on, I'll take a look at it after I get home and if it's worth working on, I'll finish it up and post it here...but don't hold your breath.

Anyway, four days until the madness begins.