If this isn’t the pit of despair, it’s the gap or at least the crevice of it

Today was going to be my 5,000-word day. It had to be. I really wanted to be caught up to 25k by the end of the weekend, but I spent all yesterday doing genealogy of my main character since I needed to know who was alive when in order to write their segments.

Instead today I went to church, did the grocery-shopping, cleaned up after the cat barfed on my new quilt, and inherited a bookshelf that Dad had replaced…which then necessitated my rearranging my entire collection of bedroom books in order to have a place to sleep. (I have books in the other room too, but I ran out of room in there, not to mention needing a bookshelf within arm’s reach of my computer desk.)

So how much writing have I gotten done today? If you guessed absolutely none, you guessed right.

Head, meet desk.

And I know it’s early. I know I’ve got three hours I could spend writing. But at this point I’m so discouraged with the whole stinking process that I’m wondering why I even bothered writing novels about these characters to begin with, and who in their right mind would want to read these novels, and what the heck I think I’m doing. Yeah, I’m in THAT place, the one Neil Gaiman talked about two years ago in his NaNoWriMo pep talk:

I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”

And later:

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing. One word after another. That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it. So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

*sigh*

Okay, okay, I get the picture.

I’ll get back to work. One word at a time.