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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Go! Go! Go

Just a quick post. Things have been going very well so far this year. I checked my logs and by last night I was 1,124 words over where I was last year. In fact I've not failed to meet goal yet (averaging nearly 2,000 words a day so far) whereas last year I'd already had one day where I'd failed to make goal and was averaging about 160 words a day less.

Maybe, despite all the editing I've done over the last year, I've learned to turn the internal editor off and just write this year. I think having a more detailed outline has certainly helped as I no longer have to stop and ask myself what happens next. Of course I still have that nagging fear that I'll run out of outline before I run out of story again this year, but I guess I'll burn that bridge when I get there. :)

One interesting thing I've discovered is that when I'm nearing the end of a scene, but still haven't made goal for the night, but I'm close enough that I don't want to start the next one, I am forced to be creative. At least a couple of times now, it's forced me to dig deeper and discover aspects of characters and their relationships that I hadn't suspected until I decided I needed "something more" before I was done with the scene. I'll sometimes do this sort of thing in revision, but it's been a nice surprise to be able to unearth this stuff while I'm frantically sprinting toward my goal for the day. I'll have to spend more time thinking about this...when I have time to think.