NaNoWriMo Day 8

Still a day behind. Mentally I am NOT prepared for, or looking forward to, writing today. There’s too much on my mind: namely the results of my grad exams, which my advisor is obviously waiting until the last possible second to send me. It’s embarrassing how many times I’ve checked my campus email today. Embarrassing. At one point I had the screen up and was hitting refresh every two minutes. Seriously.

I see a lot of posts on the internet by people who “want to write a book” but can’t seem to find the “motivation.” First of all, I want to tell anyone out there, if you want to write a book, you just have to sit down and do it. There’s no divine light from the sky that’s going to rain down on you and give you the words you need to say. It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about days like today . . . where I’m not interested in writing at all. Normally I would take a day off, but um, I have a deadline to make, and I’m still behind.

The point is that “motivation” isn’t what drives you to write; it has to be something much stronger than that. Motivation can keep you going, but it doesn’t jump start the process; that’s willpower. Today, I’m going to sit down and keep working on my story, not because I’m motivated (because I would much rather curl up and watch a movie) but because it’s just something I have to do. Hopefully, once I get started, I’ll find the motivation I need to reach my word quota. That’s usually how it works—not the other way around.

Time: 3:00pm
2: pieces of chocolate/peanut butter fudge consumed
Too embarrassed to give the number of times I checked my email
And that number just increased by one
And now two

10,315: number of NaNo words written
39,685: words to go