Mwa ha!

In accordance with yesterday's realization that really all I can do if I want to be a writer is write and try to muddle my way through writing well later, I dragged myself out of bed at quarter to six to spit out a thousand words. A thousand words seems to be a magic number. If I'd been faithful about writing a thousand words a day since CONduit last year, I'd've written 365,ooo words thus far. That's a third of the magic million. That's 4 or 5 YA novels. In that time, I would have HAD to improve somewhat, right? Right?

I started my current WIP over. Again. I think this is the fifth time. But this time I have to stick with it. I may not go back and start over, no matter how bad and lumbering I think it is.

But really, experienced writers give some pretty bad advice on this front. There's the famous, "Books aren't written, they're rewritten," but there's also the equally famous, "The book's end should be inevitable from its beginning." Which is it? Does the beginning have to be perfect or not?! It's this conundrum that gets hapless wannabees like me writing the beginning of every book six different times and crying when they go to bed because it's still not good enough, whatever form good enough takes.

But anyway, I wrote a thousand words, and that feels pretty good. That gives me permission to focus on being a mom for the rest of the day. I can write if I want to, but if I don't want to, I'm off the hook. Mwa ha.