Joyful Maiden: Day 4: Bible Verses and Writer’s Block

After doing this challenge for only a few days already, I’m starting to see how many things we have to be thankful for! It’s amazing! Here are my seven for today:

This verse: Psalm 37:4-5: “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”
And this one: 1 Corinthians 10:13: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
The ability to learn Spanish. Not too long ago, I was learning about fingers and toes. Fingers are “dedos” in Spanish. A foot is “pie”. Toes are “dedos del pie”, or literally, “fingers of the feet”. That gave me a good laugh wen I saw it! :)
A “hot” day. I’m actually sweating! Not as much as my brothers (who are working outside), but still, I’m really appreciating this warmth (and the sunshine!). At the moment, our thermometer says that it’s 22°C (71°F), but I just brought it from my room, which is slightly cooler because I had both doors (both to the inside of the house and to the outside) closed for a little while.
Lots of fresh, cool water!
Good books. Just today, I started reading The Silver Sword (also called Escape from Warsaw) by Ian Serraillier, and it’s promising to be interesting. I’m also in the middle of several other good books.
Deep blue sky—one of the prettiest colours I think I’ll ever see!

And NaNoWriMo. Today ended up being very, very good (for which I’m thankful!). This morning, I was able to write around 1,500, but hit a brick wall about lunch time. After lunch, I was not doing very well either. I was doing a lot of procrastination, all the while knowing exactly what I was doing. :)

Finally, around 2:30 – 3:00 I was trying to decide what to do to get out of the rut I was in, and remembered a piece of advice I had seen somewhere (and tried out several times, proving that it worked). “If you’re feeling writer’s block, the best thing to do is to write your way through it. Just write anything, everything, the things that do make sense, and the ones that don’t. Just write, and you will find success.”

So I decided to try it. I went on 420fables.com and wrote—for 4 min, 20 sec. Just straight writing. Here’s what I said:

       I am so foolish. I decide to write a novel, and then what do I do? Try to find anything, anything, anything at all to keep from writing! This is procrastination in it’s worst (or best, I haven’t decided) form! So that’s where I am at the moment. The only reason I’m here on this site, really, is in procrastination. So I’ll start the story here. Maybe do a writing prompt, or something. I slip on my armour—my writing armour—my earphones. I switch on the music. Not loud, but not so quiet I can’t hear it. It’s background noise, very nice. Bach. Organ. Relaxing.
       And now, for the writing prompt: I don’t have one. But I’ll find one. Oh, wait. There’s an email in my inbox I’ll have to check that first…right? No. I won’t after all. The timer is winding down… :56 seconds, then less, and less. My baby brother, sleeping on the couch, snores. Okay, I really need to write a bit about my novel!
       Someone was calling for her, softly. She stretched in the pre-dawn and walked toward the sound….

From there, it flowed. I was really thankful for that! In the end, today I’ve written a grand total of 2,582 words. Bringing my total word count up to 9,141! Yay, that’s 18.28%! Wow, praise the Lord!

I’m really glad I have treats for myself, even though they really aren’t good for me at all. This afternoon, I had to write another 1,000 words for the day (and so I could get another treat), and Joe knew about it. So, periodically (and all the time as I got within 250-500 words from the goal) he came by to see how many boxes I had left to fill! It was great inspiration, because he really wanted to help me eat some chips. :) I think that was one way I was finally able to get done. It’s a great incentive! :)

If you’re writing right now, how is it going? And if you aren’t, what’s one project you’re trying to complete here in November?
~Esther