Rachel 101

Word Count: 6,667 / 50,000

The thing I love about NaNoWriMo (well, one of the things) is that it teaches me so much about myself. And not even about my work habits or top procrastination tools (though it covers those, too.) This novel, especially, is really showing me what I'm like as a person. The main character, Lyddie, is not at all based on myself- or at least, I never set out to make her so. But she and I share so many of the same fears- big and small, personal, relationship-centered, school issues- that I don't even realise I have or still have until I write a sentence or paragraph that makes me go, "Oh..." Normally, I would detail my findings, but honestly, most of them have surprised me so much that I'm not sure I'll ever reveal them to people who might actually read this book. And since I post excerpts here, you count!

Another thing that writing my novels has been teaching me, sort of a branch off of the last topic, is what about a situation scares me. I've rediscoverd a few fears while writing this book, but I also effectively creeped myself out today (writing one of the climactic scenes) enough to realise that complete calm from someone threatening is way scarier to me than anyone yelling anything. And the nice thing about actually feeling scared when I wrote the scene is that I just took what I was feeling sitting here in the library, typing, magnified it by ten, and wrote it in.

And now, after falling behind last night, I'm all caught up on my word count AND I'm pretty happy with what I wrote, which is rare when I cram in writing like this. So, smiles all around (except for my main character... she's not smiling right now.)

Last Google search: Naked Chocolate (the cafe where the write-in today is being held. Sadyl, I cannot go.)
Last Thesaurus.com search: glare