Current writing streak: 29 days.
Another week of forcing myself into the chair, every morning, for at least 30 minutes. Am I writing new words all 30 minutes? No. But I'm working all the same: planning, outlining, brainstorming, and finally putting fingers to keyboard.
When I feel the usual terror setting in, I tell myself: Write one sentence. Just one. One sentence is a victory. One sentence is enough.
It turns out that once I have one sentence down, I can usually write another. And another. And before I know it, I've written a few hundred words.
Sometimes. Sometimes it really is just one sentence. And I have to treat that like the achievement it is; because that sentence didn't exist before, and now it does. It might be terrible, it might be great, but I can edit it later. It exists to be edited later, only because I've written it.
So while forcing myself into the chair, I've finished a few projects:
- Finished editing the short story I worked on last week
- Sent that story out to beta readers for feedback
- Submitted two more short stories to markets, one for the very first time
Next up: Back to the novel. I really, really, really want to finish the current draft; I feel like I've been working on it forever. It'd feel so good to have it done to the point where I could send it to beta readers, or at least have enough raw draft material down that I can whip it into shape via another editing pass.
