When you set out to write a novel in a short amount of time, it's hard to commit part of every day to a writing routine. I work full-time and I have a toddler. I'm also active in my church. Let's just say I didn't start writing Tendrils to the Moon because I have a glut of free time on my hands. I don't.
I faced a few challenges with Tendrils, particularly pacing, secondary characters, and staging certain sequences. None of these challenges discouraged me or threatened to stall my productivity, however. I savored those challenges because they gave me energy.
What really threatened my productivity on any given day was mustering the mental energy to sit down and open that Microsoft Word file. There is a tension to a story from beginning to end. I feel a similar tension during the writing process. Once I start writing, the unfinished work weighs on my mind. The bigger part of me inclines to avoiding that pressure, to taking an off day. An off day turns into an off week, until the internalized pressure to finish is gone. Overcoming that part of me is the hardest part of being a writer.
Even if I wasn't feeling it, it was better to look over what I had written so far and ponder where the story was going for 2 hours than to dittle on my phone for the same amount of time. Sometimes, I start creating without even realizing it.
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