Quick Word Count Update

On Saturday, I finished my chapter (1900 words) of a collaboration I'm working on with a friend - it's a light steampunk MG/YA adventure novella, episode 1 of 3, and it's at 22k words, almost done. Partner's turn to wrap it up and then we send it to beta readers to see if they can tell who wrote what chapter! ;)

Then today I wrote about 400 words on another project, a cozy mystery that's also going to be novella length...I think. Depends on what happens next, because the protags just found a dead body! Which is what the trope demands, right? So that was fun. Productive weekend, over all.

New words this weekend: 2300
Total words this month: 15,400

Now, back to reasons to quit writing (see older post) and why they don't apply to me, which means I shouldn't quit:

• Writing causes you pain. 
• You've been working on one novel for five years. 

Writing doesn't cause me pain. It used to. I once thought writing was difficult. And I thought creative types sweated blood as they worked at an idea, then spent months and months developing it, painstakingly writing it out, and then more months and months editing it, polishing it, babying it to fruiting, and finally, after months and months of pain, a Worthy Work appeared.

Now I'm learning to just write and enjoy the process of making things up as I go. It's fun. It flows quick(er than it used to). And it's not all that difficult, really. Because writing is a muscle that strengthens/develops with use. The more I write, the easier it flows and the faster I finish stories.

Which leads to today's second bullet point. It doesn't take five years to write a novel. I started one last year and got stuck. That's because no one taught me that the way to finish a novel is to write the next sentence. Then write the next one after that. Then the next after that. I learned this secret technique this past summer.

So now I'm finishing my novel and have come to the realization that, if I wanted to, I could write 7k words a day and finish a novel in 10 days. My writing muscles aren't quite there yet, but it's easier to see that I could do that if I sat down and just...wrote the next sentence. Because ideas are too numerous to count, writing is becoming easier, and by gosh by golly I'm going to finish my first novel soon. Can't quit now!