Year In Review: Obstacles

What obstacles did you face and overcome?

NaNoWriMo is always an obstacle, but one that I steer into deliberately every year. Once again I faced the usual hurdles of stalling ideas, flat characters, and the presence of the blank screen staring me in the face every morning. I proceeded through the month and achieved the goal, even though my result was not as shiny as I had hoped it would be. But perhaps then this year has been the most successful NaNoWriMo yet: I wrote a manuscript that's woefully incomplete and needs a lot of work before it could even be considered anything near publishable. And that's just fine. If I decide to go forward with work on that manuscript, I will have plenty of revision and editing to do. Part of a writer's job. I'll likely continue accepting the yearly challenge of NaNoWriMo, as it's a worthwhile exercise in discipline, perseverance, and letting go of the voice of the inner editor to further creativity.