Well, I've committed to finishing the first full draft of The Shadow's Shine Curriculum Guide - Making Friends with Grief by the end of November. Today was the first official day of this 30-day goal.
NaNoWriMo is typically a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That would be 1666 words a day.
Today, I wrote 806 words.
I guess I'm glad that I'm not committing to a word count, but rather to a project draft. Today was mostly about getting my bearings and developing a template. Since this isn't as much a creative work, but rather a curriculum design, I can apply the same template to all the chapters. I have a spreadsheet, a structure, and the first unit mostly done. Which gives me focus.
And at the same time, I found myself really distracted today. I decided to write an expository essay as the opening to each chapter. This particular chapter teaches the over-arching concept of what is psychological horror. Which meant today, which is coincidentally All Saint's Day, or All Soul's Day, or Day of the Dead, and supposedly the day that the veil between this world and the other world is the thinnest...I spent a good hour of my 3 hours writing time researching psychological horror analyses of films like The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, and Psycho. I'd open one door, and six more would appear. I felt like I was in a long hotel hallway. Were there ghosts behind the wallpaper?
I need to keep reminding myself that research is as much writing as writing is writing. Even if my word count doesn't go up. The content is ever building. And, even if there isn't much written, if something surprising comes out in the writing sesh, it was worth it.
Here's the excerpt of what came our surprising me today.
"When Jack Torrance hacked his way through the bathroom door with an axe and the word REDRUM flashed on the giant projected screen on the living room ceiling, I decided to have some fun with my uneaten sloppy joe. I mashed up the potato chips and meat and crumbles of bun and shoved them into my mouth with my fingers, spilling the barbecue sauce all down my chin while chanting “all work and no play makes Teri a dull girl.”