16,600 words--and leaving for LA in six days. . .

I have never written anything so badly before.

Okay, that's not true. I've been doing a three-page "morning page" brain-drain (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) for many years now, and virtually all of those pages are really, really, really badly written. Really.

But something that is badly written is not necessarily a bad story. (I know. Even Yi-ping here is confused. Bear with me.)

I repeat: My badly-written prose-novel draft-thing that is currently weighing in at some 16,000 words is, magically, forming itself into rather a good story.


(This is a refreshing change. Usually, my beautifully-written prose forms itself into rather a confusing story.)

My plan for the next few weeks and months, then, is to . . .

• slop on through these last two chapters,
  
• print everything out to take to Linda Sue Park's workshop at the SCBWI Conference in LA,
• read it on the train and be horrified at how badly it is written,
  
• work hard and happily to form my puddles into scenes,
  
• come back home and do what I love to do: edit and revise and polish to pieces.

So, yes: I've never written anything so badly before.
But what I've written is not actually bad.
See?

(Bonus for grammar lovers: Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for verily, we have unearthed a life-affirming difference between adverb and adjective. Go forth and live in peace with one another.)