don't think, just write

Very pleased with today's progress. I pulled up the old ms (this is the Night Road sequel) and renamed it, then wrote a new first chapter. It's pretty dark, unfortunately, and profane. Some people will tell you that writers put profanity or sex or whatever into a ms because they're money-grubbing types who want to titillate in order to make a buck. Nope. Having profanity in a ms cuts my audience from the get-go. I prefer not to have it. But I feel even more strongly about not censoring my characters or imposing other people's morality on them. I'm their one chance to speak and be heard, and it would be wrong to gag them in order to make a buck.

It's always wrong, IMO, to value how people speak over what they're trying to say.

But anyway. I wrote nine pages double-spaced, which is odd in itself because I always work single-spaced on a first draft. I do like this guy a lot. I know this chapter will look like sh*t on a real readthrough, but it's a good, strong start. I just wish I could write the whole book tonight, because if I think about how it's really going to take a couple of years of agony and mistakes and wrong turns to get this story told, I could get overwhelmed.

But there's no way around it. This first draft will s*ck, and I'll have to revise and rewrite ten million times. And then it still may not be any good, and even if it is any good, it may not get published. Them's just the breaks. The point is, today was good, and I like my MC and I like the story and I like some of the scenes coming up later. All in all, an excellent writing day for this stage of the game.