As a sort of an aside, I never associated writing with anxiety. At least, not until I got this contract with the newspaper. There are so many things that make me nervous about it that I now get anxious when I

sit down to write. It doesn't matter what I'm writing. I think that might be why I bailed on NaNo this year. Here's to you and reaching 50k!

Sometimes I can write my way through it by describing the process of working around the anxiety. Knowing I'm getting a word count distracts me. Outside of NaNo, I keep a journal

a journal where I give myself the option of a daily brain dump. Whatever is going on in my head gets described and typed out, stream of consciousness. Helps me settle in.

Thanks for the tip! I ended up crashing to sleep for several hours in the middle of the day and am about to get up to settle in front of the page again now.

You might have noticed my anxiety has always been linked to my writing Jen. I've often ranted about it lol I don't know why. What do you think it is about the newspaper that started your anxiety about it?

Several things. On my first day, we had a meeting about assignments. The editor was planning a series on method abuse in the area. It would

be 4 stories and she planned to submit them for award consideration. She assigned me 3 of them. That started it, I think.