Why Writing Was So Damn Hard Today

Some days are just harder than others. Right now I am thisclose to finishing the first draft of Fire, the fourth book in my Elemental Series. All off my books range in the 100k word mark. Today I passed 91k words. The end is near! So freaking near! And yet… so far away. I only wrote about 1k words today – my bare minimum self-imposed daily requirement – and for some reason those 1k words took me around three hours to write today. Usually in three hours I can write around 3-4k words.

So what went wrong today, Shauna? You ask. Well, I’ll tell ya. I have no idea. Yep, that’s the big secret. Sometimes the words rush forth like a broken faucet and it’s all you can do to type fast enough to keep up. I love those days. They’re exhausting and cathartic and usually the end writes like that, but not today and not this ending.

I know what is going to happen in the end of this book and maybe I’m a little afraid of it. I think maybe I’m scared to put my imaginary friends in this particular predicament. Maybe I’m afraid that the story won’t turn out the way I expect it to and something terrible will happen to one or more of them. This has been a particularly violent and emotional book and the end will be no different, I knew that coming into this but I didn’t realize what an uphill battle it was going to be to get it out of my head and onto paper.

Today just concentrating on the page was a battle. I found myself adjusting the music settings on Pandora, checking and rechecking twitter, checking sales and stats, just goofing off to be honest with you. And then when I buckled down I decided I needed to reach the chapter I was in the middle of writing before I could continue writing even though I knew exactly where I was and what was going on. Yes, reading the last few pages before I jump back in is helpful and will put me back in the mood of the moment, but I didn’t need to read as much as I did.

This is what writing is though, its work, hard work. I will get this sucker done, maybe even this week I dare say. But I’m not going to swear to that last, lol. I know it will be done before the end of the month, that much I can promise you and myself.


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