Month of Words

Unhappy with our current writing progress, me and my lovely cousin, Robyn, decided to declare March to be a month of writing. We are pledging to write 50K new words during March. I dubbed it CuzWriMo. We are refusing to let illness and winter melancholy stifle our creative juices. As I said in a thread on my writing group's forum, no one writes in a vacuum and if I sit around waiting for a muse to whack me with her inspiration stick, I will never progress.

Robyn enrolled in Holly Lisle's online editing course and is working on editing her NaNoWriMo novel as well writing a YA prequel of sorts set in the same world. My editing progress is still stalled on Chapter Three and trying to get the correct tone of a character. She doesn't seem "right." My brain is saying "move along you can fix her in rewrite number two" but my heart argues. In the end, I will have to listen to my brain or I will be stuck on Chapter Three forever.

Last night, to commemorate CuzWriMo, I started writing the first draft of The Hunted. Before I started, I went back and read the last two chapters of The Valiant. Both need so much work. I think toward the end of the story I was racing to get it out of my head before it evaporated. I almost cried when I saw how bad it was. Not one to cry over spoiled words, I moved on. Like Robyn is fond of saying, it can all be fixed. At this point in my process, nothing is set in stone. She is right of course. I have I mentioned how incredibly smart my cousin is?

This morning I am about a thousand words behind on my CuzWriMo commitment. This shall be rectified shortly with a few sprints and the completion of Chapter One. Once I get back in the habit of writing every day, I'm diving back in editing/rewriting The Valiant. The sweat you smell is the scent of literary progress.