I am convinced that the suburbs were not developed so much as unearthed by an unrelenting army of leaf blowers. 

At least the temptation to stare out the window at nature’s showiness is abated by those same landscape tools and I remember to try to focus on the work, distracted now by noise rather than beauty.

Progress, progress. The work marches onward. I’m using NaNoWriMo to add another 50,000 words to the novel this month. Some of them may even be good words.

This past week, I wrote over 10,000 words. I’m happy with where the story is headed. I need to work on my pacing, but for me, for this book, that will mean taking all the backstory that I’m dumping in the first third and relocating it during the rewriting phase. Like leaf blowing, I guess, only I hope it won’t make me quite as ragey.

However, my first act in the first round of revisions will be to get to the good stuff and to completely remove the boring stuff. My next act as a writer of a new piece will be to not include the boring stuff in the first place. 🙂

There are days I am disconnected from the writing. I make note of that and will see when the work is done if that is noticeable.

I’m letting myself do mostly telling rather than showing, I know that I’m better getting the story out rather than trying to get all the pieces together at once. I can cut down 100 words of telling into about 20 of showing on editing. That’s the poetry of it all. Occasionally the poetry happens with the first draft and then feeds on itself. But I’m ok with it happening later in the process, even on this grand scale, as long as it happens.

I don’t even think I can call this a first draft, but rather a zero draft, which feels correct and snug and good.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, I wish you inspiration and flow.