Nov. 3: Life Intervening in the Novel-Writing Process (or: Why Everyone Should Get a Notebook. Stat.)

Word Count: not sure, words not transcribed

This doesn't bode well, y'all. I'm 3 days in and already I've had a day where I could barely write a thing.

This is to be expected, obviously. Very few people can devote endless hours of their days to writing (in fact, I think I talked about that in an earlier post, didn't I? Yes, yes I did) and as a result time management becomes both the bane and salvation of our existences.

For me, most of the time it goes well. Today, however, it did not go so well.

I usually work mornings at my store--opening shifts from 6.45 in the AM until 3 or 4 pm. Today was a 4pm day. Only today, unlike most days when I would go home, park my butt in front of the computer and get to homework and/or writing, I instead hopped in my car with my classmate and we went to do some photography and interviewing for our final project.

While that was a great deal of enjoyment (and quite educational too, actually!) I did not end up home until almost 9.30 pm. I showered, ate, and am now sitting here, at just after 10.30pm.

I have to be at work again at 6.45 tomorrow.

Did I mention that my commute to work is about 20 minutes? 30 these days because the road is under construction?

Which means I really need to try to be in bed by, uh, now if I want to have any sort of capacity for work or even simpler things like, I don't know, thought.

But that leaves me with a conundrum. I wrote probably a few hundred words during my lunch break at work today. I couldn't write on the train ride home because I had my classmate with me, and that would have been rude. I reached 5735 words yesterday, which means I am past today's minimum 5001 to still be on target, but it means my lead has already taken a huge hit.


But here's the good part: I still wrote. It was only a couple hundred words--if that--in my $4 notebook, but they were words.Which I wrote for my WIP. Today. No computers, electricity, outlets or other technological witchcraft required. Just paper, pen, and a brain.

This is why longhand should never go far from any writer's repertoire, no matter how much we love our computers. Our computers can't always be with us and sometimes we don't have time to boot them up, sit down, plug in, and type. But we almost always have time to scribble a few words here and there. And eventually, those words here and there will add up to 50,000 or a full novel.

And that is pretty awesome.

Keep at it, everyone! Happy writing!


~Katherine