Here's the thing: I don't think I get all that much self-positivity in my life so when I finally find it, I do not shut up about it. On the one hand, I think "Well, yes! Rightly so! Shout your achievements from the rooftops!" but then there's this niggling voice saying, "God, do you just NOT shut up? No one cares!" But that's PRECISELY why I have a blog. I like to rant here and congratulate myself. It happens so rarely that I like to fully appreciate it when it does happen.
And as a writer, I make myself mental checkpoints so I can find these good points in my journey of writing a manuscript. I make goals so I know that when I hit them, I'll be able to be happy with myself even in this portion of my life. I'll congratulate myself and move on to my next checkpoint. So whilst there's no champagne for my current achievements, there are words, words, and MORE WORDS.
Initially, I wanted to write this post about hitting 100 pages (it may not sound like a lot but to me, that was a milestone to get to) but that was two weeks ago and I got distracted. BUT THEN, today, I hit the next best thing. 50 pages beyond my initial idea to post about 100 pages, I hit 50,000 words. If you ever meet any writer, they'll probably say that's a major thing to get. Roughly, it could be half of their full-length novel. I'm personally aiming for a wordcount quite beyond 100K for this manuscript so I'm just under halfway, but 50K is still a massive, massive thing for me to reach. Considering I only started drafting in November (and properly focusing on this in January), I'm pretty ecstatic. I refrained from posting on my Instagram (AGAIN) because I'm 99.9% sure my followers are sick of my extensive posting on their and don't read half the things I post. I did, however, post on Facebook, just a short status because I couldn't keep this achievement inside myself as I usually do. Okay, I was looking for someone to say "This is amazing! I'm so proud of you!" But I've had a lot of that lately from my very supportive sister so I'll not be fussy. After that, I went straight onto Twitter and thanked Katherine Webber for giving me amazing advice on being an aspiring writer struggling with self-positivity whilst writing and she congratulated me very nicely.
So then I found myself writing this because I've done a little past my 50K words now and my fingers hurt both from the constant iciness in them and cramping from all the writing I've done today. Also, my shoulder kind of hurt from tensing in excitement at what I'm writing so I may go do something else, stretch out my limbs.
But this is my major checkpoint. I've written one full-length book before and got to something like 145,000 words with it but that was nearly two years ago and I haven't quite been able to do that since. This novel has the drive for me to stick with it, as nothing has for those two years. I can't shut up about it; even my friend is drawing some characters from it for me WHICH I AM ALSO ECSTATIC ABOUT. I really am not shutting up about ANY of this but that's okay because it's totally fine to be writing this! My ultimate dream is for someone, any friend, to be so invested in my story that they want to discuss the characters in it, never mind DRAW them. Finally, I'm getting both, and with someone genuinely interested and I actually kind of want to cry at that.
If anything, 2017 has made me realise something: the difference between genuine support and "show support" as I'm calling it, and that it's a very sad place to be in not knowing the difference. Now, I feel like I know who actually supports this ambition of mine and those who just support it to look good. Which makes no sense but when there's nobody around to see and no self-gain for them, they don't really care or want to know. The people are supporting me properly are the people who I'm keeping close and special in my life right now because I need these people. I have such utterly low self-confidence and modesty with my abilities in life and my writing is a sensitive subject for me most times. To learn this difference was like a slap in the face and to know the people making them different to each other. So, to those with the genuine support from the beginning of my writing or recently, thank you. Aaaaand, this is starting to get so deep so I really am shutting up.
As a writer who can honestly see their future being totally in books and as one who's had a lot of setbacks and comments made at them and discouragement, this checkpoint I've just reached has lifted me up so high and for the first time in a long time, I'm truly proud of myself for committing this long and fully intending to stick to THE END.
I'm keeping this short now because there's books I want to talk about in my next blog post and I don't want to be too bombarding on social media as I do actually get told off for that! Off from a very proud and happy writer who's looking forward to my next writing time with courage.
(P.S, I'm ignoring any typos due to the excited speed I typed this at so please extend the same courtesy and don't call me out on it because I'm far too high in the clouds on happiness to feel bad.)
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