This is my mental struggle today. Check back later for my thoughts on pushing through to the finish.

And because I know I won’t have THE ANSWER, I’d really love to hear your thoughts about this.

As I was working yesterday on the Blindfolded piece, I felt drawn to those characters. I’m curious what exactly is going on here, who’s kidnapped them and tried to kill the princess? Where exactly is this taking place? Is this going to be a love story? (I think it might be.)

But I’m afraid to let myself start exploring this story/world. I’m afraid to add another unfinished novel to my collection. At the same time, that seems a pretty foolish reason to force myself to resist this story.

The heart of this issue might actually be time. I ran across a quote by Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus (which I LOVE!), the other day. She calls herself a binge writer, since she first started during NaNoWriMo. Although I’ve not ever been successful at something that structured, looking back I notice that my best work has been done when I’ve focused on a single piece consistently over a period of time. My first draft of my first novel came together my junior year of high school.

Maybe that will be the best thing to come out of this 30 day challenge: the habit of sitting at the keyboard daily. It’s honestly unrealistic to expect to just jump back into a story when I haven’t touched it for months. And I think that’s been the cause of a lot of my frustrations lately with writing. I finally give myself an hour and open up a document that already has anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 words and then I expect the words to start flowing.

I’m pretty good at unrealistic expectations.

So the question here is, how to build a better routine? And the other question will be, once that routine is built, what story gets my attention?

I know that three days is not proof of concept yet, but I’ve been enjoying the challenge so far of posting something everyday. The outer accountability helps, but so does the variety of tasks I’ve set for myself. When I start working on a novel, I’m unlikely to be posting pieces of it daily to my blog. (Although, that is an option I could consider. It would be like the old-school serial magazine stories. But I’d want to have edited and polished pieces if that is the plan.)

So, I’ll need some form of accountability. And also the willingness to let some other tasks slide in favor of writing. Or let my need for sleep be shortened in favor of writing. Figuring out how to consistently make writing a priority has been a challenge for awhile now.

As far as what story gets my attention, would it really be that bad to just follow my instincts? At this moment, I’ve got three stories in various stages of development that I’d like to work on. The characters and their challenges have got their claws in me and I’ve got to figure out what happens. I wonder how much structure I’ll need.

Perhaps rather than simply opening the current draft and trying to pick up where I’ve left off, a better method might be creating lists of questions, stuck points, and scene ideas, and using those like the list of prompts I’m working from for this challenge. Sit down everyday and look at my lists. Decide which world, which characters are drawing my attention that day, and work on one piece. It might be pretty disjointed and take some intense editing, but I do really like the editing process anyway.

I spent most of today really struggling with this problem, and in the last 600+ words, I think I’ve hit upon a solution. Funny how putting your fingers on the keys can do that. Sit down and “type some stuff.”