#NaNoWriMo2015 Diary -- Day 6

DAY 6

Today was a good day.

I reached 12,536 words before finally shifting gears to my other WIP.

I found myself outlining the scene again, the same as I did yesterday. It’s not exactly a scene so much as a period of time in the story. In this case, it’s the day after yesterday. It began in the morning with the characters eating breakfast and went through the late evening. I got to dinner when I stopped.

Also, I know exactly what the first word will be when I begin writing tomorrow because I've already outlined the scene(s). I think it was Hemingway who said to stop writing for the day when you know EXACTLY what the next word is going to be; this will make it easier to resume writing tomorrow.

The most important part is that I’m enjoying myself.

It took longer than I expected, same as it did yesterday, because I take brief breaks to go to Chrome and do a bit of research. These breaks are anywhere from one minute to about five minutes, depending on how much reading I have to do. I know a lot of writers advocate not doing this; they say not to stop to do research because you’ll get sidetracked, lose your momentum, stop writing for the day, etc. And that is a possibility. But I usually find that the piece of information I’m searching for (flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, the price of a bottle of Skyy vodka, how many orange Jeep Wranglers are for sale nationwide…) plays a key role in developing the story. Merely putting in a placeholder and coming back to it later inhibits the creative process. And it creates a stack of work to do later. I like to get my manuscript as perfect as I can while I’m writing it. I’m lazy that way in that I prefer to work really hard now and get as much done as possible in order to reduce the work required on subsequent drafts. I believe this to be helpful because at some point during the writing process all writers begin to tire of their story. It’s usually somewhere in the middle or final third of the writing of the first draft. Just ask how many writers or aspiring writers have manuscripts they began but never finished. The most important part is to have fun and enjoy writing. The second most important part is to finish what you start. You don’t learn anything unless you finish what you start.

I also earned my first 10k badge today. Yay!

Good luck and keep up the great work!