Motivation

I've been following Ali's blog on getting her 50 pages together for CWC next week. What's funny is that my word count has pretty much matched hers on each of her posts. This morning I have 7 pages to go--as did Ali as of her last post.

But it haven't been racing her, trying to meet or beat her word-count. Competition wasn't my motivation. The closest I can come to naming it is 'Fear'. Fear of disappointing my group and myself. Fear of being the first to miss the deadline. Of looking ridiculous or showing myself as not being up for this. Fear of failure.

It worked pretty well. Not that I recommend a steady diet of it. It does wear on the psyche.

So how do I keep motivated once the 50 or 55 or 72 pages I get together by Saturday for printing and such are complete if I don't employ the fear factor? I'm hoping the big Mo keeps me going. Momentum is a wonderful thing. It's what happens after you work out those kinks in the writing muscles by just doing the writing. Butt in chair, pen on paper (or fingers on keyboard) and writing. One word, sentence, paragraph, page, scene, chapter at a time.

I'm liking what I'm producing. That helps, too. It's not anywhere close to perfect, but I'm going in directions that surprise me. And that usually means I'm doing something right. The group will let me know if that's true. But until then, I'm going to work on another scene.

And then another after that. This is getting to be fun.