NaNoWriMo started last week, and I have been faithfully working at it everyday, and consistently getting very little accomplished. According to my goals, I should have hit 14,000 words yesterday, but instead I barely broke 10,000. But that number came after taking the morning off.

Since the beginning of November, I have put just about every other project on hold. Between trying to babysit, keeping the house moderately clean, being wife and mother, I have been taking every spare moment and trying to push that word count up. No luck. Maybe the problem was a bad story idea, or the lack of any real time to pursue the story. Maybe there was too much noise in the house, or too many other obligations outside of the house. At any rate, the story just sat there, growing slowly, a hundred words at a time.

Yesterday morning, I didn't want to write, or even turn on the computer. Instead, I pulled my box of beads out and made two Christmas ornaments I'd been planning for along time. They turned out beautifully. It was so refreshing to work on a project that only took a few hours rather than the hundreds and hundreds of hours a book takes. The great thing happened later when I did turn on the computer. The measly word counts of the last week were gone, and I ended up writing almost 4000 words.

In my excitement to get the NaNo book underway, I had forgotten one of the keys to being productive. Creativity takes so many forms and we need to allow every form its opportunity to be expressed. By limiting ourselves to one outlet, we put a cap on where our minds can take us. When one project feels dried up, it is time to put it away for a bit. When I put NaNo away for a few hours, I felt refreshed when I came back to it.

This morning, I took some time and put together a necklace my daughter has been wanting to wear with new sweater. I enjoyed the process and worked over some plot points in my head as I strung the beads. Now it is back to the writing. But my brain is racing and I can't wait to see my word count soar.