Word Count for the day: 1833

Writing Duration: 2.5 hours

Word Count so far: 3526

Writing snack for the day: Dark chocolate – Lindt

Writing drink – always: Espresso, lots of it

Temptations: Twitter, phone, friendly neighbor, work pile

Tips of the day: Do NOT read book from start. This will prompt you to automatically revise/edit which will screw with your head and your flow.

So today was harder.

Precisely because I decided to read what I wrote yesterday and as stated in tip, it screwed with me.

After editing extensively, re-read what I had re-written and decided, preferred the original stuff anyway.

Moral of Story #1: Do Not Revise. This is a marathon. Aim of month – to keep going and get to end. Save quality assurance and rewrites for December and other months to come.

Moral of Story #2: Trust Yourself. This is a good exercise in getting out of the way and just letting story and characters through. Trust that you will know something isn’t working and alter it as you go.

Moral of Story #3: November is about moving forward. Never, ever, look back.

Once I got over the looking back part, which by the way consumed about an hour, it took me a while to recover – lots of stopping and starting and second-guessing – before getting into the moment and running with it once again.

By the time I stopped, found I had written a little more than yesterday.

I suspect as days dribble on and book grows thicker, it will get increasingly difficult to keep going and ignore urge to rewrite.

The other obstacle I encountered today was after yesterday’s success, I thought about the story heaps and sort of had a preconceived notion of where it would or should go today.

Result: I kept getting in the way.

When I decided to surrender myself once more to the muses, the story flowed – not the way I thought it would but in a way that surprised me and made me discover a few more things about my character.

Tomorrow’s Aim: Go with flow and trust myself.

I want to thank you ALL for your generous support, comments and re-tweets thus far.

Am deeply touched. Couldn’t do this without you.