I did it!


Ok, I didn't have good enough internet to get pictures of my trip posted yet. I DID get my writing goal accomplished!
50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month in November.
I wasn't sure if I liked having the task hanging over my head every single day for a week. I didn't write for the 5 days I was in Victoria. But on the last day I felt the crunch, and I remembered that I love to write, and that I type really fast. And I did it! Just over 6,000 words in one day to meet the deadline.
I want to bask in this feeling of success. I doubted since Day 1 that I could really pull it off. I learned the trick. Don't edit. Just let ideas flow. The goal wasn't to publish a book, it was to get ideas generating. I feel like a creative genius, my friends. And the feeling is good.
I'm also impressed that I beat the clock. That I applied myself, and I came through. I want that feeling to last also. In the mean time I will try to not break my arm as I pat myself on the back.

Now I have to decide what to do with those 50,000 words, right? A voice in my head still sternly states that I don't have what it takes to publish an actual book. I don't know what I'm doing, and it's complicated, and my life is not stable. I have 3 weeks and then I don't know where I'll be. Not in a bad way, but my husband's job will end, and we will decide what to do next. We aren't worried about it, it's the opposite. Just too many options to settle on one. I don't know my next step for content editing. I suppose I could say: hey, start with chapter one. I got more confidence in the 3 main story lines, if I could figure out how to wrap them all into each other.
Then the stern voice softens a little and says, well, is there an audience for 3 short stories?
Then the happy confident part of me says: hey then, dream big! It will be a book. I have all the time in the world to enjoy carefully crafting page after page now.
So maybe my goal will be to have it ready to self publish by November of next year. Then I can do this all over again for a sequel. Or something like that. I have a children's book I want to do. But it would never be 50,000 words. That's over 70 pages. Well, that would work if it was 100 pages, complete with pictures. I have an idea and I started to write it many years ago, about monsters.

I found a great picture for the cover of my book. I just need to keep thinking thoughts like that to remind me that my dreams will come true. Equal parts action and a belief.
It feels good to believe.




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