Last week, I stretched my 3-day writing streak to 5 days. Same with this week. What is a 2-week streak called? Since my words with this holiday novella flowed, if in a meandering way, I just kept writing. Two days ago, I decided that if I didn’t get to the climax, whatever that was, this novella would become a novel, and not an exciting one. I had a chat with the muse and jotted down 4 details to include in the rest of the story. I never plot, but I have on occasion listed where characters needed to be or what they needed to do in order to finish the story. It’s usually at this point that finishing energy surges, and I keep at it until it’s done.
When I get about three-fourths of the way through a project, it feels like I’m slogging through mud. I know what to write, but the scenes seem to take a really long time to get onto paper. I noticed yesterday that although I had the pen in my hand and had been “writing” for an hour, I only had two pages done. I realized I spent time looking out the window, thinking of other things, getting a snack, watering the plants, so not really sitting with the pen moving for those sixty minutes. And I wonder why this story is taking so long! Haha!
The last four months, more so than any other time in the past 17 years that I’ve been writing and publishing, it has felt like everything is harder. And that’s something, since I consider some of that time as situations one might call a “dark night of the soul.” I wrote before about the heaviness of January and the fallout in February and March. I wonder now if this is a permanent change. That the writing is slower, my focus is less laser-like, my attention on one day at a time. I’m glad I made the mind set shift before the cosmic flow changed.
The first draft of The Lost Gift should be done by next week. I know I’ll have rewrites, and that’s okay. I’m looking forward to finishing, even if just to remind myself that I can finish a project. In a couple of weeks, when the writer’s group meets again, I hope to find out if the other authors have finished or will finish their stories. If so, great. If not, it will be a change, but that will be okay, too. Any changes that you’ve noticed recently?
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