~~~~~
That’s my paraphrase of Rebecca Stead at Sunday’s Texas Book Festival Tribute to Madeline L’Engle. The discussion had turned to process and after Rebecca Stead mentioned she was a slow writer, Hope Larson asked if she’d heard that R.L. Stine writes a book a month.

I spend a lot of time agonizing over how much I don’t get done or trying to change my process to be faster or more productive and I know I’m not alone. My writing friends have recruited me in trying everything from fast drafting to setting a schedule to accountability buddies. We’re all out there looking to be better, faster, more productive.

Again, I didn’t catch the exact quote because I was being blinded by the light bulb going off above my head. Instead of spending so much energy trying to fight against my process, I should just learn to love it, slow that it sometimes is.

It’s a good revelation to have just before NaNoWriMo. It’s the one part of the writing process that I look forward to. I was thinking of skipping it this year. I have one mss that needs to be pushed out into the world and another that needs more revision attention than I’ve been able to give it. But dammit if I’m giving up an exhilarating month of fast drafting, logging word counts, and putting my head down and getting lost in my book.

I’ll have to spend the other 11 months learning to love my writing process, but November? I’ve got that one down.