2) A subcategory of It Doesn't Count: don't try to draft in polished narrative sentences. It's too stressful, y'all. I mean, unless you're feeling it today, that's fine. But if you're feeling skittish, don't try to push it. I have what I call Narrative Sketchy, and I think I've mentioned it before, but the typical example I give is, "She's walking down the stairs--I don't know what she's going to see when she gets down there. Is it dark? Maybe there's a cat." It's more like describing the scene to yourself, almost an automatic kind of writing, and I have surprised myself several times. You get one of two things out of this process: at worst, you've blocked out what you want to happen, and you've wrestled through the whole What Happens Next problem so you can focus on writing pretty the next time around; at best, you've slipped into a proper narrative voice midstream and started writing usable text. When I pop up and go, "YAY 2500 WORDS!!," this is what I'm usually talking about: blocking things out, discussing them with myself. And a lot of times some proper narrative comes out, but really, I've come to consider What Happens Next to be just about the hardest part of the process.