Smelling the Barn

I have made it eighty percent of the way through the word count of my NaNoWriMo novel for 2016. That’s over forty thousand words written to date. I have less than ten thousand words to write to complete the challenge. Who knows how many words it will take to complete the story. It is an interesting story. I can see that it is going to need a lot of work to whip into shape.

I have learned a lot about following where my instincts take me. The best parts of this work have been pulled out of my imagination on the spur of the moment as opposed to being part of the original premise. One of the things that I’m going to have to do is rework the main premise to fit in with the good parts that I discovered while writing it.

I’m still learning the craft of writing. I’m not sure if this is something that I’m going to want to try to pursue as a full time occupation or not. It is hard to know from the experience that I’ve got under my belt so far. I will say that I’ve had more fun writing this story than I did the first one. Or the second one either. I forgot to count the novella that I serialized on this blog earlier this year.

I’m going to reserve my judgment until after I’ve shepherded a novel all the way through the process of editing, rewriting and selling it. After I’ve done that a couple of times maybe I can make an informed decision about whether I want to continue doing it. But by that time, I may be so addicted to the activity that I won’t have any choice but to keep writing. I’ll risk it.


Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.