Pushing Through

*tries to slip in unnoticed*

Oh, hey... is this where my blog is located? I guess I kinda... haven't posted for awhile, huh?

BUT, guys, I have an EXCUSE. And it is a good one.

I've been writing. And yes, it's November and this is a writing blog, so of course, if I'm posting, I've been writing. But I mean I have been composing like a mad woman. Thank goodness for computers, because I have done so much writing today that I wouldn't be able to move my hand if I'd had to do it long hand.

See, my schedule blew up recently. What with classes, rehearsals, and you know, LIVING, I fell way, way behind on my wordcount. And what's more, when I did have time to write, I'd basically sit there and stare at the screen and maybe get a hundred words out of it.

I know there are sometimes slow periods, especially in NaNo, but this was bad. Because to be honest, I could keep pushing it off until tomorrow, thinking I'd have more time, but every tomorrow brings another 1667 words to be written and it also brings with it my crazy schedule. I mean, seriously... this time next week, I'll be opening a show. So even though I'd sequestered myself for a good four hours yesterday, I got nothing out of it, and I was determined that today would not be another one of those days. I took advantage of my second class being cancelled and went to the school cafe and wrote.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to chip away at the wall I'd been smacking my head against for the past few days. I found my plot again, cleaned up some Write or Die scenes, and in general got my act together. Then I changed my location and did three thirty-minute, thousand-word Write or Die sessions. And finally, after about seven hours, my word count stands thus:

Word Count: 28,421 / 50,000

I am seriously proud of myself. Not only did I write 6,982 words today, I also found a brand new, awesome plot point and had a few new things go wrong for my character. Yesterday, I was desparing that I could write another 35,000 words of this novel, but now I think I might be able to swing 21,579 more.


So my lesson for today, everyone- DETERMINATION. I was about to give up on NaNo this year because I was feeling really overloaded. But in the end, I really want to do it, so I pushed through and it was hard but so, so worth it.



In other news, I had the reading of my first twenty pages of my Peter Pan script in my playwrighting class. It went well. I wasn't too happy with how it was actually read... if only the class were full of actors. But, as my friend in the class said (who I cast as Peter), you can get it from the writing, too. I got some great feedback, both complimentary and constructive, and I'll be returning to that once this entry is finished.

I watched my teacher as he read along with it and I thought he didn't like it. But while he had some questions, in the end, he gave me a compliment so awesome that I am afraid to repeat it to anyone. I'm not going to write it here because a) I don't want to jinx it and b) it's very specific to my school, so you guys might not understand WHY it was such a compliment. But it really was, and it gave me hope, especially since he wasn't so into the idea in the first place.

So now I'm off to work on that! Push through, NaNoers, push through. It'll be well worth the effort.

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