Day 3

5009! Eight whole words ahead of schedule!
Maddy and her friend Lisa have been instructed to play nicely downstairs, and Sonia is at Lisa's mama's house playing with her best friend Dave. An hour long window of opportunity seized and now I can go to my massage course this evening without being distracted overly much by possible scenarios for chapter 2 to be written in the wee hours before I can go to sleep tonight.

What is surprising me most these last couple of days is how much time really can be found for writing, or any other single-minded pursuit, I suppose. I am able to slip in and out of writing mode with very little turbulence either way. My preconception that I couldn't possibly ever try my hand at writing unless I worked considerably less has been proved utterly wrong.

And the thing is, I secretly suspected that it was wrong all along, but the hypnotizing allure of Pure Potentiality kept me in the limbo of Someday... Now that I have simply started writing, I see the advantages and disadvantages of Pure Potentiality more clearly. The major advantage is that I never actually have to do the hard work of learning the craft of writing - I can just read well-executed novels by first-time authors admiringly and say "I could do that. I see how they did that..." and half believe it as I drift off to sleep at night.

Unfortunately, there is no way back to Pure Potentiality now that I have 5009 words to serve as an indication of my potential (ahem), so I shall stress here the major disadvantage of living in that pristine state where anything is potentially possible: on some level, I never really liked myself for not having the pluck to try.

Because of NaNoWriMo's emphasis on quantity above quality, I am in a position to allow myself to playfully try without cancelling out the pure potential that lies in my skills as an editor. Perhaps this amorphous mass of words I am producing may be the beginnings of a not terrible novel, and wouldn't that be something!

Maddy and Lisa just came up to ask whether they could disturb me for something very important. Apparently they are the Totally Spies girls (popular cartoon show here) and each of them needs a piece of super bubble gum to help them get the bad guys (the unsuspecting neighbors). Time to sign off...