I'm going to try to do at least one post a week. I like the idea of keeping a journal of my progress, if for no other reason than having a way to decompress after a day's worth of work.
And today was a good day. I hadn't touched the manuscript in a while. The last time I did, I had started expanding the prelude into—best guess—what's going to end up being five chapters. I had managed to turn probably the first thousand words into a chapter and a half.
Returning to it now, I made some more changes to that new first chapter, then worked towards finishing the second. By 5:30pm, I had hit 5,000 words—two completed chapters and the first two paragraphs of a third—which was my blue-sky goal, really.
I was honestly expecting to spend most of today rediscovering my sea legs; slowly dip my toe back into the manuscript and give myself enough momentum for a "proper" day tomorrow instead. So, this is quite the victory—and while I'm certainly going to celebrate it, I'm also very cognisant of the highly likely possibility that not all of my workdays are going to be as good as this one.
In fact, I think I'm even more keenly aware of that now than I was when I first started work on this manuscript in Norwich last year. Which, funnily enough, makes me feel less afraid.
I've lived through bad days, weeks and, hell, even months. And I've come out the other side—still typing away.