Today, I felt like writing!

I really enjoyed the scenes I was working on. They went well and I felt like I was making some good progress, finally.

It’s day six. I’m 23,562 words in. And today I felt like I was making good progress! FINALLY, TODAY.

There’s this notion out there that you need to wait to be inspired, or that all your best writing flows from inspiration, or if you’re not moved to write then maybe it’s not the time.

In my personal opinion these notions are bunk.

The absolute unwavering key to writing–beyond that, to getting anywhere with your writing–is to do it consistently, as a discipline, until you can do as much of it as possible during the moments you have available.

People ask me all the time how I manage to be so prolific. And truly, to me there’s no big secret. Five to six days out of the week, I sit down and I write. For an hour and a half every day. I take my laptop to work, I sit down on my breaks and lunch hour, and I write. If I don’t hit my word count goal with that, I write at home, or I write at Starbucks.

Not every word is going to be wonderful. Not all of it is going to be the best prose or dialogue you’ve ever produced. Some of it may feel awful, or rough, or slapped on, or over-written, or too sparse, or an absolute agony to put one word after another like squeezing blood from that overused proverbial stone. But each word you put down is more words, and for Nanowrimo or a first draft in general, every word counts.

So don’t wait for inspiration to seize you by the balls, and don’t sit around and expect every day of the month to bring you a cascade of glittering word-stars pouring from the sky to illuminate each moment of your manuscript into something brilliant and sky-touched. That’s not going to happen, but what you can do is sit down and do the work. Making it to 1,667 words a day is work, and don’t let it discourage you. Because it’s only the beginning.

What are you waiting for? Go get your write-in on.