Or: Despite my best efforts, this doesn't relate to NaNoWriMo at ALL.
Like the title says, I'm afraid of double spacing my documents. Not in a serious, phobia, oh my God, keep it away, keep it away! type of afraid, but it's something I avoid until my third or fourth revision. This drives my crit partner and beta readers nuts.
(My lovely beta who I absolutely adore and love read Spyder on... well, I finished it, did a readover once to basically make sure everyone had last names, and sent it to her. Then she sent it back, I read over it again and, with help from her notes and suggests (she really is awesome), I added about... 10k? I think like 10k. And then I sent it off to my crit partner. (Who is also awesome.) She did her thing, I revised a bunch, sent it back and she has draft 4 right now. And I can't believe it's only draft four.)
Anyways, I sent it back this last time double spaced so she wouldn't kill me, but it wasn't really easy. I know how weird this sounds, but there are a couple reasons.
First of all, sometimes double spacing fools my brain and I can't judge the length of paragraphs and things correctly. Like with this, if I double spaced the rough draft, I'd have a hard time juding when to start a new paragraph. Which is about now in this case.
The second reason is a bit strange, but here it is: double spacing makes it look too real. "Real" manuscripts are double-spaced, see? When you start to submit things to places, be it agent or contest or whatever, you have to be double spaced (and a lot more formatting, obviously). In school, you always double spaced the final copy that you handed in to the teacher.
When I double space my WIPs, it feels to real. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it to be so real... but at the same time, I want it to be real so badly. I want to be ready to query, to get rejections... but it's scary, you know?
That's kind of the way I felt before NaNo started, especially the last couple days of October. I was ready and I desperately wanted it to be November so I could start writing... but it was scary at the same time as the closer it got to November, the more real it felt.
(Then on Saturday the 30th I had an insane fever and was loopy and out of it all day and Sunday I barely dragged myself out of bed. I really wanted another day in October to rest up and get better, but that didn't exactly happen. :P If you're wondering, my word count's fine, though, I'm not behind or anything. And I'm feeling better!)
Well, look at that, I did manage to relate it to NaNo.
Anyways, I don't really remember where I was going with this, but I guess this is what I was trying to say: Writing is scary. It's okay to be scared when things start to feel oh-so-real. But don't let it stop you.
Peace and cookies,
Laina
