As I was writing Wednesday morning before going to work, an interesting thing happened. The writing software on my computer I was using told me that I had reached 50,000 words. It has that feature. Two thoughts entered my mind at that point. The first was how could I be at 50,000 words. I’m not done yet. I still have no idea how this story is going to end. The second was “Okay I reached the goal. What next?” Over the few day since I have realized something. Having that dealing hanging over me helped. It pushed to keep writing. Without it I found that I am floundering a little. My daily word count since Wednesday has been woefully inadequate. I am having trouble letting the story move forward. My inner editor is questioning every word choice. Asking if the characters would actually do what I am having them do.
Getting over this hump is going to take a couple of things. One is easy. I just gave myself another deadline. I set myself the goal to reach 100,000 word by the end of the year. I truly do not expect the book to need 100,000 words, but it is a nice round number. The second is proving to be more difficult. During November, the one thing I made myself do was silence my inner editor. I tried very hard to not go back and edit anything I had written in the previous days. For the most part I was successful. Yet, for some reason, I am wanting to do that now. I will have to buck up and tell myself to not do that. Any editing and any revising will wait until the story is done. Done and forgotten. At least a couple of months forgotten. That way my subconscious will have have a chance to give it a once over. I am hoping the the free time today and over the rest of the weekend will get me back on track.
I’ll let you know how it goes.