Friday, December 13, 2013

The Blank Page

I'm 6,788 words into my newest novel, the second book in a young adult urban fantasy series about a young girl caught up as the centerpiece in a political revolution such as the world has never seen.

Only 93,212 words left to go. In this book. And then, there are the next two.

George R.R. Martin, author of The Game of Thrones and subsequent sequels, once famously said, "I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy having written."

I won't necessarily completely agree with him. I do enjoy writing. I enjoy it a lot. Mostly, however, I enjoy writing snippets. A title here, a prologue there, even a chapter . . . or two. But when I stand at this end of the book, and gaze at that end of the book, I feel a bit like a clown fish would feel if I were released from the relative safety of my tiny Petco saltwater tank back into the Pacific Ocean.

It seems overwhelming and daunting.

Daunting: adj: tending to overwhelm or intimidate

My thousand-words-a-day rule is my thread of hope that I cling to every day. Every day, I sit down during my kids' nap times and peck out a thousand words minimum on my laptop. It may not make much sense, it may not even add to the storyline. But it's a regular discipline that I maintain stringently. I don't miss a single day. It's not a lot of words; I read blogs from other authors who write ten thousand words in a day and send off manuscripts to their publishers every month or two. 

At this stage in my life, I can't do that.

But I can write a thousand words. So I will. Eventually, I will stop the story around 100,000 words, look back and say, wow, I did it.

Baby steps.

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