NaNoWriMo Challenge Success!

It's a week into November and the NaNoWriMo contest, or in my case the NaNoWriMo alternative challenge. Last week I was all ready to start writing and get the ball rolling, except when I actually sat down to write, I couldn't come up with two coherent words to put together. This puzzled me for a bit, because I had done NaNo (the official contest) and other unofficial NaNo challenges with no problem. After a few hours of no progress, I hung up my spurs and decided to get something out of the day and spent a much needed time with the Hubbie. The rest of the week I reflected on why I had trouble and came to the conclusion that I had been so focused on other things that I was incapable of doing the challenge, so I had to make the decision of whether I would bail on the contest or continue.

I decided to keep trying and see where I go. I had to rearrange my head a bit to get myself into the contest mode. I spent this morning working on my story Fahrenheit and managed to get 1,370 words done in about an hour and a half, so I'm feeling a bit more confident about working on the story now. Once I got a few words on the page, the story seemed to flow out with a life of it's own. It was really wonder and I felt like I was flying there for awhile.

I can't wait to see where else this story will take me as I continue to write on it this months. This month is also an attempt for me to start reading and writing everyday. I haven't picked up a book in months because I didn't want the distraction it caused, but realized that my writing progress had become somewhat stalled by not reading. I have actually done pretty good at starting to read everyday and have even been writing a little everyday this month (just not on the story, I chose for the NaNo challenge).

As always the journey of writing has shown me once again how fluid yet concrete it can be. In reality it's the mind and the state of mind that controls the reigns of where the horse and cart go. My hope is that I can control those reigns a little more as the month progresses. Wish me luck and the best of luck to all the rest out there who has taken up the torch of a challenge!