Renee is Writing

Committing to writing a novel is a tremendous joy and a tremendous burden. When you combine it with a full time job and at least three hours a day in the car driving to and from work, it makes for lots of stress. But the rewards are immense. The unraveling of thoughts and the re-weaving them into a coherent story people might want to read is a challenge but it makes me feel wonderfully creative and filled with purpose. The past week has seen little movement toward more pages of "Safe Places," despite having enrolled in NaNoWriMo and needing to keep up with my daily word quota. But here is a weekend in which to play catch up. So on a sunny Saturday morning I am back at the computer looking at my chapter outlines and getting into chapter eight of writing my novel. But first a little side trip. On Wednesday night I held a book event at the Salvatore LaRussa Dance Studio in Middle Village. The event was largely attended by co-workers who came to support my literary efforts....

So it's November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month. I'm a rebel according to the official website, since I am not starting a brand new novel this month but working at adding 50,000 words to an existing ms. The challenge is simple, um hm, choke, choke, just write about 1667 words per day, which equals 6-7 pages. And by November 30 you have the first draft of a 50,000 word novel. I've signed up for this before and then dropped out. This time I'm going to do it. My goal was to have the first draft done by December 31 so if I can get 50,000 words by November 30 I'll be close to the end. As of today I have 20,052 words of the draft, plus two notebooks of scenes written in preparation to plug in wherever they will fit. I think I can do this!! The obstacle is time and energy, meaning dragging myself home from work, and now it will be dark out by the time I do get home, and getting in a workout, dinner and a shower before knuckling down to write my requ...