Day 10: A rest for one third done

Its day ten; you’ve been stretching your writing muscles until they ache. Your fingers hurt. Your arm’s stiff. You have a crick in your neck and you’ve been up too late five days running (on the sixth you fell asleep at your computer.) The month is a third gone and you don't know if you can keep this up. You want to stop.

Guess what, its Sunday! You’ve worked hard for the past week and it’s time to take a break. No guilt. No pressure; just you and rest. Go to Church; say some prayers for your fellow novelists (and yourself.) Read a book. Catch up on your favorite TV show. Go for a walk. Spend some time with your neglected friends and family. Take a nap.

I haven't really been outside much in the past week, I wonder it it still looks like this? (taken 11-2-13)

Tomorrow you will get up and jot down a scene on the way to school. Or make a few notes in the elevator, or while you’re making the kids breakfast. You’ll write over lunch and during that moment of peace when the baby’s down for a nap. You’ll write while your sister’s hogging the bathroom or while you clean the kitchen. You’ll steal a few hours before bed and again stretch it out until one day becomes the next. Tomorrow you’ll write.

But not to day, not unless you want to: It’s the one day of the week where you don’t have to push yourself to write just a little more and a little more after that. You can be lazy about it and only write that one conversation that came to you over breakfast. Or that description that has been haunting you since you woke up.

Just for today, let the words come to you; don’t chance them down like a runaway toddler. Give them a chance to calm down, lull them into a false sense of security. Tomorrow, you’ll get them. Tomorrow you’ll show no mercy. Today you can afford to be lenient, benevolent even.

Today you rest, tomorrow you write.

— Rita

And that makes us a third of the way through NaNoWriMo, time flies doesn't it?