So, as I was typing out some of my pages from my notebook, I realized that the story that I was dreaming of last year came surging back like an all-consuming tidal wave.

Instead of increasing the storyline of the one I was working on for the last few weeks, I started from a different point of view on last year’s story.  (The one I lost interest in because I basically plotted my way through the whole story.)  I still have my notes and history and verbiage from that story, too.  It’s kind of cool, because I remembered the lingo so well, that the words came out very naturally.  Of course, that means I basically start from scratch, but I think since I have a bigger view of this story, and the end is basically in sight (albeit, 95,000 words away), I can plod on like a little workhorse and power through the loose outline that I have.

My goal right now is to finish a story, and get all these clamoring voices out of my head before anyone can suspect me of being a little off (though, it’s too late for my hubby!  He’s stuck with me as is!).  That would be an indicator of success for me.  I understand that my first, second, etc, novels may never get published, and so with each story, I would hope that my novel-writing skills would improve.  I won’t even begin to worry about my (lack of) publishing status until I have at least 3 stories finished.

I think Stephen King said that you had to write about a million words of crap before you can start to write well.  In Outliers, the magic number was 10,000 hours of practice to get to perfect.  Well, my current journey is trying to get those 10,000 hours in and 1 million words out.