Time, Time

For some reason I have much less time than I thought I would this semester.  I only work fifteen hours a week, I only have 14 credit hours, and yet, I have very little time.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays, are, like I've mentioned eight or ten times, are my busy days, and that's just too bad.  I wish I didn't have busy days at all.  Oh well, even with my days being full I'm still barely over word count with my NaNo novel, plus I'm getting all of my homework done and all my papers finished and all my tests studied for.  Go me. 

Today, I want to talk about a subject very dear to my heart.  Motivation.  What is motivation?  How do you get it, where does it come from?  I've talked a little bit about how I got here, to this point, working on my third novel when I only barely started working on my first one a year ago.  I had an idea, and the novel just started writing itself, really.  And I got the idea from being unemployed and working for a man at a Celtic Fair in downtown Phoenix.  He gave me his card, I looked up his website, and one of the pages had eight pendants that were supposed to enhance certain things - wealth and knowledge, was one.  Unexpected good fortune, another.  This is the first thing I wrote down in my first notebook - 'cliche fantasy characters - a 'party'?'  Then I wrote down attributes, names, both of characters and places, and then I wrote in three notebooks almost 100k words of story and over a hundred pages of notes.  That took me about none months.  It was fun, but I wasn't motivated, I was looking at it like work but not a job.  I missed my first self-imposed deadline, then my second, and then I told myself that I was going to write ten thousand words a week and finish it by the end of September.  And I did.  And I've been doing so ever since.  I bought myself a writing journal, and I told my fiance that I would write every day, that I would hold myself accountable.  He didn't really believe me, and I understand why - I hadn't been keeping up with any deadlines, or really holding myself accountable at all, so why would I do so just because I bought something?  But damn it I have written thousands upon thousands of words since that day, September 7th, and it's not looking like I'm going to stop anytime soon.  Why?  Why did I suddenly care enough to make it a job, to make myself write every single day until I feel uncomfortable if I don't?  I don't want to take any days off.  I don't want any day to be a zero word day.  That makes me feel like a failure as a writer. 

So what happened?  I have no idea.  All of a sudden it came to me that this is what I want to do every day for the rest of my life.  I want to be a writer, a novelist, I want to make a living out of this, all I need on this earth besides the man that I love is to be able to earn a living writing.  And I know that I'm going to get it.  I will not let it not happen.  I'm going to be published by this time next year, I can tell you that.  And I feel like I'm reprising a lot of what I've said already in earlier posts, but suck it up, I'm telling you again.  I don't really get a chance to say this out loud, so this is the best place for me to do it, to give myself those affirmations and keep myself on a positive road.  I've said it before, this is my year.  I've found my purpose in life, you know.  I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing, so I won't let anything stop me.  I keep finding people that don't know, don't have any idea what they're supposed to be doing, they feel lost, they're having these existential crises, they're asking themselves why they're here and they're not getting any answers.  What do I say to those people?  How can I possibly tell them what happened to me when I don't know?  I always wanted to be a writer, always, but it was only very recently that I asked myself why I'm not trying harder, and when I did, things started happening so fast I'm still not quite caught up.  So how do I give any advice to anyone still floundering, not sure what they're going to do with their lives, people still wondering how to avoid feeling lost forever? 

If you have any advice, either for me or for someone still in limbo, please post something here.  My path is set before me, I can see it.  All I have to do is follow it.  What would you say to someone who still hasn't found the path?  Thank you for stopping by, I hope you're all having a great night and thank you for dealing with my verbosity, those of you who didn't just skip to the bottom, or leave entirely.  See you tomorrow.