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Sparkle (1)
Every year, hundreds, maybe thousands, of writers hunch over their keyboards in November, trying to churn out 50,000 words of a reasonably complete novel.
In solidarity, I start looking around for a writing project, even, in desperation, eying old novel drafts. Sometimes, I try to figure out how poetry might be adapted to churning out words for quantity, not quality. The closest I came was trying to write a poem a day. I've fallen off the poetry wagon in recent years.
And, I think I've finally found it. BlogHer has NaBloPoMo. Post every day for a month. 
There are prompts, too. Today's is:
What is your favourite part about writing?
My favorite part is when I feel ready to sit down and write it, and have a reasonably good idea what I'm going to write, what sentences I'm going to string together. Otherwise, it's just so much fidgeting, procrastinating, vacuuming, running on the treadmill (literally) and not sitting at the computer.
Before I have a sense of the sequence of sentences, (try saying that out loud before coffee) trying to sit down and write makes me all squirmy and in an increasingly grumpy mood.
Of course, beautifully sequenced writing ideas tend to hit with the precision of Murphy's Law: in the shower, or just as I'm falling asleep, or with hands too full of groceries I'm carrying home to pick up a pen.
I know that I'm not the only person dealing with these frustrations, and I know that the trick of writing consistently and well is to make myself write, even when I'm impatient with how slowly and poorly the words come.
And yes, I've tried to write in the shower. Soap crayons are hilarious, even if they're bad at transcribing actual ideas.
- E
Freelance Writer and Book Reviewer
