Challenge Day 2

     Day two of my challenges and I have met my goal! Actually, I exceeded it by 189 words. I'm very happy with that, even though I'm not quite up to the 1-2k per sitting I used to crank out. This feels good, though, I feel my creativity stretching and waking up again, even though I feel like it dries up more quickly than it once did. In addition to the new section in my YA novel, I also edited nineteen pages of my sci-fi novel. This was much better than I have done the last two days trying to edit. I think the difference is, I printed my novel and edited by hand with my favorite purple felt-tip pen. I also made sure yesterday that my YA novel was at a clear stopping point/section end so I could easily begin handwriting it instead of typing directly into the computer. As soon as I got going with my purple pen (All hail the mighty purple pen. Hail!) again, the ink flowing onto the paper, it was like my brain woke back up and shook the cobwebs and rust off of a part of itself I was afraid I no longer knew how to access. As a matter of fact, I knew that I was close to making the 500 word goal for today, based on what I'd already typed into the computer, but the scene and the words would not stop flowing and I literally (Yes, literally.) could not stop writing. It felt so good to have ideas flowing like that again, to hear what the characters were saying and writing as quickly as possibly to transcribe their words from my mind's eye to the paper. I have always handwritten all of my work first and I loved that part of my writing process. It's such an organic experience, watching and feeling the words flow from my brain through my arm and my hand to the pen and onto the paper. I write in cursive, as well, which adds something to the smooth, flowing process of the writing. That's why I'm so picky about my pens, I think. I absolutely cannot have a break in ink flow - it destroys my entire train of thought, throws off my concentration, and my relaxation in the flow is gone because there is no flow - it's been interrupted by the skipping ink of the faulty pen. This, though, today, felt like magic. I think when I first started back into this on New Year's Day, that was part of the problem. I was coming back to electronic manuscripts - a novel that needed edited and another that had already been transcribed from notebook to computer. They felt like foreign pieces to me. I didn't recognize them as my own works. I couldn't connect with my stories or my characters - a lack of connection I felt most strongly in my YA novel. It was like the ink was skipping. Once I had the stories back in my hands, could touch the paper and let the words flow freely, uninterrupted by keyboards and computer screens and word processor spacing errors, I felt free again. I felt like me again. I felt my characters again. I remembered what I was so impassioned about with this YA novel, where I wanted to take it, came up with new ideas for it. No, I didn't write as many words today as I used to, but I think, for the experience alone, these were some of my favorites I've written.