Pushing Through - NaNoWriMo Final Week

It's November 25. It's the last week of November, the last week of National Novel Writing Month.

As of this moment, I have 35,667 words. That's nearly 62 pages. In order to be "on track" to finishing by the end of Saturday, I should be at 41,666 words by the end of the day. Then it's just 1,667 words each day for the rest of the week. I'm behind. See.

It's not that bad. It's not. It can be done. Today I have oodles of free time. I should be writing my novel, but I don't want to today. I didn't want to yesterday either.

For the first few weeks, I loved NaNoWriMo. It gave me life. I discovered that my love for writing is much deeper than I originally thought. I love writing.

I don't love deadlines. I don't love the stress of being behind. I don't enjoy feeling like I have to do something I love. Writing has turned into a chore this past week. I don't like that.

It reminds me of my last year in college when I had to do my senior recital. I loved music. I loved playing the flute. Then it became a chore. I hated it. Once my recital was over, I took a break. I set it aside and did other things with my life.

I still love my flute. I miss playing this year. Playing the flute still gives me life. I just had to make it past that awful deadline. I just had to push through my recital. Today, I just have to push through writing. I need to write. 

I still like my character. Emily Ann is developing. Other plot points have jumped up. I like the story. I just hate seeing my progress bar. 

A few friends are reading the story now, so I'm not alone in this adventure. Friends, what do you think? I appreciate feedback, especially critical feedback. It's useful.

I still like writing. I have so many blog posts running through my mind. I am excited to write them beginning December 1 (or November 30 if I become ambitious and finish my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo early). I love writing. I miss writing in this space.

So to nourish my soul, I took some time to write about something I wanted to write about this morning while I waited for my coffee to brew. 

And now I'll go write something I know I should write. I'll avoid updating my word count. I'll just write. I'll enter into Emily Ann's world for awhile and camp out there. And I think it will be refreshing. I think it will be fun. I think today I'll love writing again. I just need to start. That's always the hard part isn't it?

What things do you need to push through? What "chores" do you need to finish so you can enjoy doing those things again?