I was super thankful for yesterday's free hours to sit down with my notebook and get some serious plot-planning and story-boarding done! Not only was it Easter Monday, but it also happened to be my birthday, and the added blessings of spring sunshine and the most amazing family/friends in the world made it a day of inspiration.
Some of my best writing days are days just like this one, days of thinking and living and being inspired without actually putting a single scene on a page. I soaked up some sunshine while plotting Kyrian's journey, spent time with family, did some "creative research" in the form of a Monday night movie, and even took time to do some fan art (author art?) to add to my canvas collection. (Featured).
Once upon a time I may not have considered a day like this a success. How can it be, really, when the manuscript remains untouched, the word count static, and my notebook's pages filled with nothing more substantial than bullet points, questions and flowcharts? I used to get myself tied in knots over what I thought of as "unproductive" days, until I was so frustrated and stuck in my writing, I would pass weeks on end in a bad mood, waiting for ideas to strike.
The fact of the matter, as I'm realizing, is that not every day can yield page upon page of "successful" writing. Some days yield a page, a paragraph, a sentence. Some days yield nothing at all. But being inspired by life, by God's daily blessings in the world around us, is just as valuable (if not more) than sitting at a computer trying to force a story just to meet a daily word quota. Sometimes a writing day is a thoughtful day, a planning day. Sometimes it's a doodle-your-protagonist day. As said by V.E. Schwab, "Some days are typing days, and some days are thinking days, but both days are writing days."
I wholeheartedly agree.