Gold Dust

I kept working last night (that is, in the small hours of the 6th) and I managed to get chapter four to a close. It stops more than wraps up, but I feel like building more suspense in this early part of the book. When I finally went to bed I only needed 23 more words to meet today’s quota. I did that and more this morning (again, 6 November). Chapter five has us back to what the aliens are up to. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I like the way I describe the sensations of the aliens arriving home to DeepDark.

With this whole NaNoWriMo thing you get regular e-mail encouragement! Some are sent by the head of the whole shebang. A nugget I’m taking from his week one message is this:

Getting through a first draft will require you leave perfectionism and self-criticism at the door.
- Chris Batty

Most of what I have written so far on this blog is about how my work doesn’t measure up. I’m going to try to have less of that. I’m going to try to just celebrate my writing, at least for now.

The encouragement doesn’t just come from the NaNoWriMo staff, either. We get messaged from “real,” published writers. It’s great, because they don’t talk down to people new at this or hint that we aren’t actually writing a novel. They just share stories about their own writing experiences. He’s a bit from a name you may know:

…when I look over and see a little fragile stack of written pages that weren't there that morning. A few hours earlier they didn't exist. And now they do. In a strange way this is more actively thrilling than even holding my finished, printed, book in my hands. It's where the magic lies. Alchemists tried for centuries to turn base metals into gold. Every time we sit down and put words on paper, we succeed where they failed. We're conjuring something out of nothing.
-Jonathan Stroud

By now I should have 10,002 words.
My current count is 10,228 words.