Breathing Anxiously

Once I decided to answer the call on my life, and dive head over heels into this journey, I had mixed emotions. Feelings of concern about what I was going to write now that Waiting was completed. I had a sense of satisfaction that I finally had a completed work. I felt proud. (I am still waiting to hear about the status It's been almost six weeks. Should be soon, I pray.) The idea came for The Five Barred Gate from another dream. As I began writing it, I fully intended it to be a Short Story like Waiting was. But as I wrote, the story took on a life of its own. The next thing I knew TFBG reached the length that Waiting was. And I has just started to begin to tell the story.

That's when the idea for a novella came about. A novella is a short novel. About 30,000 words. A novel is above 30,000, generally around 50,000 words. Then a friend introduced me to NaNoWriMo. That target was 50,000 within the month of November. Knowing what I wanted to do with TFBG that journey began. Well, its been 11 days and I've had good days and bad days. Not to mention, that in all reality, I have only had 5 real days to write. During my work week, I work on average 12-14 hours per day. That doesn't leave much time in the evening to do much writing. But with some determination, and a supportive Carolyn asking me, "Are you going to write tonight?" I am much further than I could ever anticipate.

After today's writing, I'm at 35,800 right now. With 19 days left in the month, 5 more days off to finish this puppy. I am confident I will complete it. My concern now is that I will exceed 50K words. Not that it matters. There is no rule, in fact exceeding it would be better. The more I write, the more I'm falling in love with it. Sometimes the words are just flowing so well that I don't realize that time is passing. When I come across a period that I don't feel like writing I write.Then I fall into a rhythm and it's so natural. When I'm at work, I find myself driving down the highway under another load feeling anxious that I am not behind my keyboard. I came across this inspirational saying, it sums it all up:

As something Carolyn and I say to each other when we dislike, or in this case enjoy, 'I like this game'.