PUSH... PUSH!!!

PUSH! That could be the title of my weekend's writing endeavors. If you or anyone you know has ever had a baby, you know there comes a point in the labor where you just have to push. You've probably seen one of the dozens of television shows where the doctor is yelling push So-and-So push! And the Mom (who has a little bit of sweat on her brow but other wise looks fabulous) goes GRRRRR and pushes and POOF out pops a baby. That is absolutely not how it works in the real world, pushing 2 or 3 times and a gigantic healthy baby just falls out is unrealistic. Try pushing for at least 20 minutes to several hours and it hurts like you cannot believe to get that baby out. But then you have this beautiful baby.. the doctor hands it to you and it's perfect and beautiful. That is how writing can be at times. And is pretty much how NaNo feels ALL the time. PUSH.. PUSH!!! If you push hard enough and long enough you hit that magically 50k mark, even better is when you finish the first draft. And you can suddenly hold in your hands a novel.. written by you!! Then just like with kids you realize you still have a LOT of work ahead of you.. and the polishing and editing phase begins. But still you pushed through and caught a novel!

This was a big push weekend for me. At 8 o clock tonight I would have sworn that there was no way I was making my goal as I was 2k shy and still had to get the kiddo in bed. First I have to admit I am a huge football fan, mostly NFL but this year being taught the beauty that is college football. So weekends have not been my best time of productivity, yet I still set above pace goals to try and a reach. Friday night I was at 31k and wanted to hit 35k. One would think no problem! Then Saturday was at 32037.. ok not bad not quite where I wanted either. At 9:30pm tonight I was sitting around 33k and I was struggling to decided where to go with the story. I was stuck in a sea of technobabble and unsure of how to tame the tide. I stared and stared and watched time tick by with no words adding to my score. Then I suddenly realized that I was not the only one who was stuck in this sea of technobabble, but my main character was as well! So we took a brain break.. I had her stand up walk around her desk and do some yoga. I wrote 350 words about the yoga she was doing in her office. Critical to the story, not at all.. did it keep me writing and pushing towards my goal YES! By the end of her tree pose I got an idea of how to get the story rolling again and had one of her coworkers burst in on her yoga break. Over the next hour 1100 words flowed through my fingers and onto the computer screen and I edged past 35k. At 12:02 in the morning I hit 35002. I used the new edit daily word count and counted it as Sunday writing since I was so close when midnight hit. It might not have been perfectly on time, but neither is delivering a baby. I still made it. Just keep pushing.