Put some words on the page. Good or bad. You can fix it up later. In the past year I wrote a kids sci-fi novel. Well, I finished the draft, and I’ve been editi

Put some words on the page. Good or bad. You can fix it up later. In the past year I wrote a kids sci-fi novel. Well, I finished the draft, and I’ve been editing it the past few months. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for years, but only finally got the ‘kick’ when I quit my job last Feb and had 3 months of paid garden leave (awesome, right) before I could start the new job. Perfect time to write my novel. I wound up only finishing half of it by the time I started the new job. With its long hours, I was worried I might not get to finish my story. But I have a daily commute, and made it my business to do some writing each way. About 30-40 minutes on the train, it was my dedicated time. My time to escape from everything else and immerse myself into my story. It worked out great, somehow knowing this was my only window to do it gave me the motivation to keep it up. And I finished it!! Sometimes, on a good day, when I had an idea how the scene would play out, I could get 2000 words. Rare but it happened. The early days I could just about do 500 words, but later on 500-1000 was my usual. Some days I just couldn’t get past a couple sentences. Bad days happen. Accept it. But “Just write” is great advice. If you’re stuck on a scene, skip it and go to the next one. But keep putting down words. If you don’t know how to open your book, start a couple chapters in, somewhere you know what will happen. Most of the time I had no idea how a chapter would work out, what would happen beyond some vague notions. But eventually things fall into place. Characters act of their own volition, out of my control. Editing, now, that’s a whole different beast. I feel my productivity has dropped dramatically and I’ve been stuck in perma-edit mode. Hope it to make a few final tweaks and send it out to some beta readers. Anyway, a long stream-of-conscious post agreeing with putting down words. (Cutting them out is harder)