This year, in an effort to make myself write the story going wild in my head, I joined NaNoWriMo. As it sometimes happens, despite my enthusiasm and my willingness to write about 2000 words each day, I got only a little over 14,000 words written throughout November. Luck was not really on my side, although my muse was, and I found myself wanting to write and unable to. Client work, personal issues that got me into an emotional roller coaster, everything that wasn’t supposed to happen, did so.

But the truth is that although I wished to use NaNoWriMo to write 50,000 words, that was just a dream. I could tell client work will pile over me in November, but I had a different expectation – get the story started, write a nice chunck of it, see what needs tweaking in story line and characters, and then keep on going. I did keep on going, although at a slow rate, but I managed to create a habit that will get me to the end of my novel.

That is how I discovered sometimes it is extremely important not to go crazy and get frustrated by a temporary inability to write. Lack of time, lack of inspiration, all these are obstacles that a writer needs to learn to tackle. But driving yourself desperate with guilt and frustration won’t really move the obstacles out of your way. What you can do is think of solutions and try until you succeed. While that is easy to say and a lot harder to do, you still have to try.

I know I did! I tried to swim through the guilt, disappointment and growing anxiousness and write when I could. I got a rewarding session of over 600o words one Saturday and other equally fun and challenging 2000-3000 words writing batches. I love my story even more, the characters are getting more prominent contours and I keep writing! So far, so good!

How’s your writing going these days?