Nanowrimo is kicking my butt

… but that’s a good thing.  While procrastinating my daily word count, I’ve almost finished Book I of Sons of the Starfarers, formatted and orders proofs for the first four Star Wanderers novellas, alpha-read most of another book for a friend, and done a bunch of other things (which is nothing compared to a friend of mine, who procrastinated by getting a job).

Right now, I’ve got about 3,500 words written, which means I need to write about 2,000 words a day in order to hit 50k words before the end of the month.  Actually, that shouldn’t be too hard–most of the difficulty of writing is just getting out of the way, so when I put my hands on the keyboard and say “whatever you do, DON’T STOP WRITING,” good things actually happen.  At a nanowrimo get-together at Dragon’s Keep in Provo, I knocked out 1500 words in about an hour using that method.  It’s actually quite liberating–I should do it this way more often.

So why only 3,500 words, instead of the 11,666 that I’m supposed to have?  Because I REALLY REALLY REALLY have to finish this Sons of the Starfarers book, and that’s been taking up virtually all of my time and mental space.  I hit the action stuff a couple of days ago, and things were just flowing, but now it’s that last crucial scene and I’m not quite sure how to pull it off.  Probably I’ll write something and change it later, or tell myself that at least so I can just finish it and move on.

But UURGHH!

Anyways, that is all.  Back to writing.

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

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