Hi friends!
Happy Monday! I hit 60,000 words in the second draft of my book over the weekend! This is exciting for me because it's the most I've ever written in a single draft of a writing project. At this point I'm starting to see the plot and the character development come together. It's definitely still a ROUGH draft, but it is so much better than my first draft of this story.
While I am stoked to have made it this far, I still have to constantly remind myself that at this point in the writing process it's progress over perfection that matters. Otherwise, I end up super frustrated about the difference between where I want my story to be and where my story is actually at.
And it's not just the progress I've made with this project that's important, but how far I've come as a writer. Around this time last year I did not have the discipline to be able to write this much in three months. While I haven't written every day for the past three months, I have written consistently every single week. Last year the only time I consistently wrote was during NaNoWriMo.
Last year I also don't think I had the skill to write this book. I will repeat this until I'm blue in the face, but I truly believe the more you write, the better you get at it. By continuing to practice this skill, I've started to notice writing has come easier to me. Writing a book is still not easy by any means, but I haven't found the process quite as painful as before. The ideas flow a little better, my descriptions sound a bit nicer, my characters are a tad more developed, and my plotting had become more complex.
There is still a long way to go with this book, but seeing this word count makes all those weekends and late night writing sessions I spent drafting this book worth it.
So for those of you writers out there feeling like writing your book is like pushing a giant boulder up a hill, take a second to look back at how far you've come in your story and be excited about the progress you've already made. Progress doesn't mean perfection, but it does mean you are better than you were yesterday and that's something to celebrate (yes, I'm giving you permission to go buy yourself an ice cream cone).
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Hope to see you around here sometime soon!
Taylor
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