Just trying to grin thru it all. I’ll be blogging later about my lack of a poem yesterday but since I had two days with two Very Bad First Drafts I think I’m ok.

Keeping pounding away!

I share your fear of the Very Bad Draft. I get sweaty, and my heart begins to race when I think of the Very Bad Wretched Vile Draft. I have to lie down and take a nap when I think of the Very Bad Wretched Vile Draft because it distresses me so. I am also aware that the Very Bad Wretched Vile Draft must be written. And that distresses me even more.

But, in the past week, I have written more Very Bad Drafts and Halfway Decent Lines than I have, quite honestly, in over a year. (The horror! The horror!)

So yes yes YES — NaPoWriMo is most certainly a WIN.

I think we should produce a NaPoWriMo infomercial.

I’m not afraid of bad first drafts, I fully expect them — I have a friend who joined a writing group this year & is just bursting w/ the “fail fail fail” feelings you’ve described, and I point out to her every time that revision is what makes a writer, the process of turning those bad drafts into something less turd-like.

But.

I can’t walk away from drafts to begin another, not until I’ve I’ve worked myself into some corner that simply requires a break, or it’s “done.” For now. It’s a very slow process, and so my catalog of poems is depressingly small. But I enjoy my process, being so absorbed, that point of “flow,” so I’m not complaining. But the only reason I’ve managed 5 poems so far is that they’re 7-liners; I’m averaging 4 hours each.

And now, on my lunch break, instead of working on the 6th, I’m commenting here, because I’ve hit a wall and am in avoidance-mode…NaPoWriMo makes no allowances for the self-indulgent self-congratulatory baloney one feels after writing something new, just cracks the whip & tells you to hop to it.

So I will, alright already. )