Things I learned from NaNoWriMo #9 (#nanowrimo)

#9 Don’t wait for the muse.

The best advice I ever read was in a writing book so old that the author recommend that, if you were serious about writing, you really ought get a typewriter (no lie). The advice was that the stuff you write when you are totally inspired, when put side by side with the stuff you wrote when it was very slow going and you forced yourself are the same quality. Sure, writing is easier when you are inspired, but, in the end, if you only wait to write when you are inspired, you will never get anything done.

If you don’t want to write or don’t feel like writing, do it anyway. Take that chance to plod through those scenes you aren’t excited about. As you write them, they will feel terrible. Don’t worry about it. When you go back and read later, they will be better than you remember and you will have moved the plot of your book along which is all that matters.

The muse is a fickle bitch. You don’t need her.