One word after another after another ...

Okay, first to credit my ever encouraging and under appreciated boyfriend Matt-Josh, he said this to me many times before I went on my digital inspiration journey: JUST-KEEP-WRITING.

Last night I only pumped out a couple hundred words because I kept changing little tiny words and phrases so as never to complete more than a page. I sat down to write tonight, and I found myself researching everything I wanted to write about. The mention of a city, a color, the anatomical make up of a strand of hair (okay, that last one is an embellishment). Finally desperate from my own self inflicted sabotage, I went to NaNoWriMo for some inspiration.

I read through all of the pep-talks by published authors, and of a collective 17 respected authors, only two really did it for me. They came down to three simple facts:

1) Writing is the hard part of being a writer. The plots, the metaphors, the shimmering, cleverly flawed characters laying in wait - those are icing yet to be spread with out the messy toiling of a first draft.

2) At more than one point I will hate every single word I write and try and convince myself to do anything but write, as every writer has done this with every book they have ever written.

3) Writing is a journey. You start with a few basic ideas and then it takes on a life of it's own as long as you let it and don't get bogged down by the "rules of trade".

Now, without further butchering of good advice by neophyte like myself, writing pep-talks by Neil Gaiman and Tom Robbins:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1065561

http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1052008