Motivation

Last night I wrote another nearly 3,000 words.  I've now got a little over 90k total, which is more than I wrote on the first novel by more than 10k.  I think I'll need to cut some ultimately -- the first quarter or third of the novel may meander a little too much -- but I'll see when I go back to do revisions.  In the meantime, a new character has proven himself to be a plot ninja, and is going to tell his story before the end of the book, so I may surpass 100k after all.


There has been a lot of talk about motivation lately.  A friend I made during NaNoWriMo was asking my advice, because he struggles with it.  And another Wrimo commented on the Denver NaNo Facebook page, saying she was struggling with it, too.

Obviously I'm probably not the best person to turn to for advice, since I failed to win NaNo in November, and failed even to get back to work on my novel until this past Saturday, more than a month later.  But a lot of that has been because of how busy I was, and I am less so now for a couple of different reasons.

What I can tell you with complete confidence is that on the days where I make myself start writing, no matter how difficult it is to get going, those are the days where I succeed.  Usually getting started is the hardest part -- sitting down and starting to write, but also getting through those first few hundred words.  At first the writing usually comes a bit slowly for me, like when you're stiff before a workout until you stretch out.  Sometimes I find that it takes me 500 or 1,000 words before they start coming easily again and I can lose myself in the story.  But if you can push yourself through that, that's when the real writing occurs and that's how people finish novels.