A merry and wonderful holiday to everyone!

Namaste.

I can’t believe it!  I know this makes me sound gauche, but I’m stoked that it worked.  Aye, but here’s the rub:  I am fundamentally a shy person.  I’ve never outgrown this, however I have learned how to deal with it in my professional life.  Still, when I received responses to my request this week, I felt myself start to freeze.  I began to experience the numbness that shy people feel as they try to disassociate from what is uncomfortable to them.  I felt fear.  I felt the need to flee.  What do I do now, I thought, I have to follow through.

So, I picked up the one thing that has always helped quell my fears and resolve my life’s dilemmas:  my pen.  I wrote my interview questions as well as the follow up questions I thought I might want to ask.  Then I started to write this blog post.  Writing has seen me through the toughest times in my life, so it’s natural for me to sort this all out by writing it down.  It helped calm me, and I felt in control of the situation when it was all down on paper.  I felt my comfort level start to return to normal.

Yesterday, I conducted my first interview, and I thought it went well.  My interview subject was very gracious (especially when I had difficulties with my recording equipment), and she gave me great information.  Later, when I checked my email I found responses from the rest of the experts I requested interviews from – all in the affirmative.

I’ve followed up with everyone – just waiting to hear back as to scheduling.  Now, I’m jumping over to my next article and compiling a list of experts to contact.  I’m actually looking forward to my next round of interviews.

It’s amazing how a little success can boost a girl’s confidence!

That is what I did.  My goal was to establish a writing habit, and I have.  I get up early, and I write.  What is amazing is that I write fiction.  At this point I don’t care if it is good or bad care that I’ve written something I can work with in the revision stage, but I don’t stress over it being beautiful prose.  I want to tell a story.  I want the story to be entertaining.  I want my writing to have meaning.  But to have it do all this, I have to at least get something I can work with out of my head and onto the page.

National Novel Writing Month gave me the tools (and confidence) to do just that.  So while I did not reach 50,000 words, I have a writing habit (or some would call it a schedule) and something down on the page.

Hooray, me!

I have been following Johanna Harness, who writes the Claire Morgane series for YA readers, on Twitter for the past month or so.  She is the one who checks in with everyone at the top of the morning via the #amwriting hash tag, has pithy Twitter posts on her progress throughout the day, and blogs about her process.  In a recent post, It’s been one year, she memorializes her first year of establishing a writing habit.

For National Novel Writing Month, this is what I am trying to accomplish, and it hasn’t been easy.  You see, the word count goal is just the “ends” of the “means.”  As we begin the fourth week, I realize there is no way I’m ever going to meet the 50,000 word count.  I’m okay with that.  What bothers me is that I fell off the wagon.

Yes, there were family obligations, work to finish, and chocolate to eat.  But there were also characters who needed their story told. I failed them, or at least that’s what it feels like.  Worse – I’ve failed myself.  This was very important to me, but it didn’t seem to make a difference when faced with my laundry list of stuff to do, errands to run and family who needed my attention.  I know I’m not the only writer who faces this.

Now I have to decide what I’m going to do moving forward.  I still want to establish a writing habit.  I want to write a novel length work of fiction.  I actually want to finish this particular novel.  So, I’m picking up where I left off and pledge to write one scene every day this week, including Thanksgiving.  Then, in December I will participate in SuNoWriMo – Susannah’s Novel Writing Month – and see what happens.

Hopefully it will be habit forming.