Flying Through.

I am currently at 12,044 words. That's right, I not only hit the 10k mark, I swiftly kicked it in the butt and kept right on going. Today's word count was my best so far at 3,488.

However, I'm feeling frustrated with my writing. I'm getting the words out, better than I had ever hoped...but I'm not sure of the quality. I feel like I'm rushing scenes when I should be drawing them out, giving vague sketches when I should be painting in the details, and generally just mucking up a perfectly good story with my mediocre writing.

When I voiced this to Ryan, he pointed at the post-it on my laptop, and made me look him in the eye and say it out loud:

I am good at this.*

The hardest part of this, it turns out, is not getting it out, but being okay with just getting it out. Not rewriting as I go, not pausing to hem and haw over every scene, but simply churning out the words--and the story--as fast as my fingers can go.

Ryan is counseling me on my frustrations, saying that my only goal for right now is to finish the story. Fifty thousand, seventy thousand, twenty thousand, whatever: Finish the story. Then go through it, with multiple colored pens and multiple sets of eyes, and give it a good combing, finding the places to flesh it out, the places that need more of this or less of that.

He is of the opinion that, since I'm already a quarter of the way through the word count goal and a third of the way through my story, I should hit the end of the story before the end of the month. At that point I'll have the extra time to go back and fill in the parts I think I rushed through or skimmed over.

I'm just hoping he's right.

Tomorrow is back to work for the next five days. I know this was only the first week, but I've come to the conclusion that I do my best work on my days off. I don't have the fact that I have work later hanging over my head, or the exhaustion of an 8-hour shift slowing me down. I still plan to try and get in early and stay up late, pounding at it until I have to go home and eat dinner, but, in all honesty, Friday is what I'm really craving right now.

Wish me luck!

*I now have this sentiment on a post-it stuck to my laptop keyboard, on a scrap of paper by my desktop monitor, and a "sticky" on my laptop's background. I've had multiple people inquire about it, praise it, and say that they want one for themselves. I should sell t-shirts...