640 words today, in two thirty minute chunks. The first was between classes, and the second was just now, at night. And I need to get some sleep, so this will be short.
We had an awesome quark meeting yesterday, but I’ll write about it tomorrow, inshallah. I’ve got so much stuff to do, and to top it off, one of my good Arab friends called tonight wondering where I’ve been, so I’ll probably end up hanging out with him and his roommates and friends until late tomorrow night. For those of you who don’t know Arab culture, there is an expectation that friends see each other every day. This is a good friend of mine, and I haven’t seen him in about five days or so. I want to keep up these Arab friendships and learn this culture. So, on top of a couple of tests, a hundred plus pages of reading in one class alone, and much more, tomorrow will be VERY busy.
Fortunately, I’ve noticed that setting daily goals has been helping. Or, in other words, I noticed that when I didn’t do it today, I was a lot more lost and squandered a lot more time than I did the days before when I had been planning. So, I figure the best way is to go to the library at around eight in the morning and just do homework all day. It goes fast when you focus on it. Gotta train myself for nanowrimo, after all.
But as far as the story itself goes, I noticed today that because I haven’t been writing in it very regularly, it was hard to figure out what I wanted to do next. By the end of the day, I’ve got it figured out, and the momentum is back again, but it’s much easier to write when you’ve got some daily and weekly momentum. Once I lose the momentum, projects get put off until I forgot what I wanted to do with them, and I’m left with a bunch of half-finished storylines that I have no clue where to go with them.
But momentum is not hard to build. It requires a little bit of focus, and a lot of time spent just thinking about the story when you don’t have to think about anything–walking to and from classes, driving here and there, walking to the creamery on ninth, etc. Just thinking about the story does a lot to build momentum again, and renew the excitement. At least, it does that for me.
I know what I want to do in the next twenty or so pages, and I’m excited to do it! New characters, new conflicts, solving some of the old ones and creating new ones in the process, and describing the culture of the people indigenous to Nova Salem. It’s going to be fun to write! IF I can freaking find the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
