The official blog of Michelle Tuckett, word ninja.

Day Sixteen: Not enough of 50,000

I have been writing. I promise.

But… Remember how I keep picking at that novel from January? How I keep working on it in my down time?

Yeah… It has posessed my brain completely now. I am stuck on the characters and who they are and what the story is evolving into, and the atmosphere, and well, you get the idea. It has my head wrapped up in it like a facehugger from the Alien movies.

Yep, just like that.

And I know I should be writing this months novel. I mean, it’s freaking public and everything, and part of the goal for this year, so I think about this a long time – trying to write that novel, and I get a good idea and open up a file to get started.

Then the facehugger thing happens all over again and next thing I know 2,000 words have sprung from my chest (see what I did there?) and it’s two in the morning and half a bottle of wine has disappeared. It’s like a torrid affair with characters I’m not supposed to be seeing anymore, but I just can’t quit.

I have written somewhere around 25,000 words of that novel, rewritten, to be precise. The facehugger novel.

And the other novel? Yeah, ummmm… I have a lot of writing to do.

A. Lot.

I have despaired to irowboat several times now that I think the blog was a bad idea and how awful it all is and what was I thinking. You know, the usual artistic angst crap. He told me to shut up and write, which was just about what I really needed to hear, even if it made me want to punch him in the nose.

And frankly, I might have done it if he wasn’t one of the few people I know who could totally kick my ass. And then, he’d sit my bruised ass and me attached to it back in front of the keys and tell me to shut up and write. (Ok, he might give me an ice pack and cup of coffee too.)

I’m not stopping. No matter how much more sexy the other project is. And it’s kinda sexy.

Ahem.

I guess this is good practice for November and writing two novels in a month. There, see? It’s not falling behind, it’s training up for the big event. Yeah, that’s it. Not a facehugging novel of doom, but practice.

Sure. Why not.