Paddling with the current

On Sunday I silently floated by the 50,000 word mark. The sensation that this is going to be a real novel just hit me after thinking back on all the work that brought me here. I'm still surprised that so many people choose to endeavor upon this, it's a lot of work! It's not all been fun but I feel like I'm getting back on track.

Speaking of fun, I think that it hit me what was creating so much strife for me with my writing. The fun was starting to go missing from it. I had tied myself to some deadlines that felt realistic to me at the time. When I actually sat down to write the pressure had thrown me into such a panic that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I think if I didn't have a full time job to occupy all of my time, it would be a different deal. But you know, life is happening and bills need to be paid. In light of that, I still am able to manage a solid hour of writing time daily. With that hour, I can enjoy myself and let that joy translate into how I'm writing, or I can whip myself to push out more words. That feeling also unfortunately gets translated into my writing. Maybe that's something that you work through after years of doing this, but I'm not there yet.

So now it's back to joy. And trying to recognize that when I title a blog post, "decompression sickness" that I'm doing it for a reason, whether it's consciously or not.

Here's to the coming 50,000 or so words and the resolution of my story.