NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 2

I'm now at 6,747 words total.

I'm flying through this novel. I feel like a runner in a marathon, and the high they talk about as they reach a mile marker and know they are well on their way to the next marker.

I never run. Most of you who know me personally, know that even though I should, I never run. Exercise is the "E" word to me, but I can walk. I love to walk. And now that things are starting to settle in my life and in my writing, I feel the urge to walk. Especially this week.

Last week the weather was like walking out in a hurricane. The cold and the wind and the rain and the dark clouds made you just want to climb back into bed and sleep. This week, the sun is shining and the temperatures are cooler, but the sky is that bright brilliant blue that it only gets in the fall, and with the white puffy clouds, it feels like a perfect day. The leaves make noise underneath your feet, and the trees have bared their hands to heaven. Smells like wood burning and a pumpkin pie baking or some banana bread warm and out of the oven, just make you want to bottle days like this and save them.

Writing is my way of recording what I observe, make sense of what I see, taste, smell, hear, and most importantly, feel. I have always been an observer. I've been content to over hear conversations, to look and watch to see what happens. I was blessed to find a partner in life who enjoys "people watching" like I do and we love when we can just sit back and see how people interact in large crowds, in public, with their families, and their kids.

We also like reading the T-shirts.

One of the most important lessons I take from doing an exercise like NaNoWriMo is the fact I can write whatever I want and it can be the worst crap in America.

And that's ok.

For many years, I thought to be a good writer, you had to struggle and you had to perfect every word, every sentence, every paragraph. You don't have to be that rigid. You can just write. Write your ass off. Write because you feel like it. Write because you are happy, sad, confused, hurt, or bored.

One of the best lessons from Mrs. Fliginger was to just write something, anything, until you write something else. If we couldn't think of something to write, then she would say, "Then write 'I don't know what to write' until you think of something better to write."

I have had to do that to get through my articles, to finish my NaNoWriMo novels in the past when I have let the perfection run me right into a writer's block. It's a trick that works so well. It's so simple and so easy. You almost think it has to be more complicated than that to work. Stop complicating it.

Just write. Be happy, and just write.