In which I try to develop a habit

One more week before NaNo starts. Whew. I hope I've gotten this writing thing down as a habit by then. I'm told it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. I think for some people, however, it takes longer for the changes to get hard-wired. I expect I'm one of those people. So I don't know if this is a habit yet or not. I suspect not quite yet, because I still think about how to get out of doing it. You don't think about that sort of thing when it's a habit, you just do it without thinking much about it at all. So I have to keep making myself do it until I don't have to make myself do it any more. I wonder if there are some things that never become a habit. I hope, though, I get the writing habit. I think it's the only way I'll ever get anywhere with it all.

Haven't been doing the morning things, though, so they won't be a habit (yet). Mornings are just too complicated as it is. Maybe if I can get the other morning habits going, then the writing one can follow, but it's not entirely up to me. I will try harder for NaNo, though, since I don't think evening will be enough to get the job done.

But hey, if I do more than 5,000 words, I'll have beaten my score from last year!

So as I get closer to the writing, I find myself wanting to read more. Was looking for Pratchett's Hat Full of Sky in Borders today, as it's bound to be out in paperback by now. Didn't find it, although the computer claimed it was there. But there are other places to look, so I'll probably pick it up sometime soon.

Satire is one of those things I think I write well. Problem is finding something sustained to satire. After NaNo, I think I'll try to resurrect my fairy tale, and polish that off. I think I should maybe work on finishing stuff up that I want to finish. This will mean getting my defunct laptop into a place that will get the data off the hard drive for me. Shouldn't be too hard- the laptop is only defunct because the thing that connects the plug to the battery broke so you can't recharge the battery. Maybe it would be even easier than I think to get a hold of the data....

Well, let's see, what else can I talk about? Today was not a story-building day, at least not consciously. A lot of storybuilding goes on behind the scenes in my backbrain, but none of it surfaced to share today. In some sense, I'm saving it for the real deal. If I share too much too early, I tend to stall out on the idea. I don't know if I'm more inclined to think things are "stupid" when someone else has seen them, or if any kind of comment makes me second guess it, or both, or both and some other stuff too, or just some other stuff. But since a lot of me wants to share to see what folks think, I get conflicting emotions about early stage sharing. On the one hand, I want people to encourage me to keep going, and on the other hand, I don't want to know if it isn't perfect, and on the other other hand (and yes, I know it is strictly illegal grammar to have more than two hands) I kind of want someone to discourage me so I won't have to finish the thing after all. Because part of me is just as afraid of it being really good as it is afraid of it being really bad. Fear of finishing- if it's done, someone will judge it, and either way, I won't like that. My advice to me? Get over it already! Just get the thing out there, and THEN worry about the critics... But if I share too soon, the critics, especially the little inner one, will have undue influence and will kill it before it has a chance at all to be something more than vague ideas.