Well, here we are at the half-way point of NaNoWriMo and I’m still writing.
I’m slightly under a day behind on the word count targets and that’s only because a, I spent the day being sociable yesterday b, I’ve been fighting off strep/tonsillitis and c, I spent some time on Friday not writing by trying to untangle all the threads I have been spinning.
PROGRESS REPORT
In Week One the challenge was just sitting down and churning out that many words each day (must write an average of 1667 a day to meet the 50K word goal by Nov 30). I would write for three quarters of an hour and feel really proud of myself and then I’d check my wordcount and find out I’d written 358 words. Almost without fail. Getting to 600 words was torture. Then, somewhere around 750 words, things would start to flow and I would start to fly — and then I’d usually find I’d run out of time. A session later in the day pushed me well past my goal most days.
I am careful not to overshoot by too much because I know myself. If I ever sat down and wrote 5,000 words in one day I would feel so damn pleased with myself that I probably wouldn’t write anything meaningful for days afterwards (“Ah, I have a buffer. 358 words today will be fine!”)
In Week Two, which is apparently when a lot of people lose enthusiasm and drop out, I really started to feel like maybe I could do this. My characters and plot lines were coming together, I was starting to see how they interacted and what was going to happen to them. I was starting to find sitting down to write much easier, now that my mental muscles were warmed up.
DEALING WITH DEMONS
This is now, officially Week Three. I’m not sure what other NaNo-ers say about it, but I’m kind of wishing now that I had boosted my wordcount a bit in the past two weeks. I sense that things are going to go a little slower now. I’ve spend the past two weeks starting stories, setting my characters in motion, letting them roll along and explore their world. Now I need to start intertwining their stories. I have to make sure that timelines make sense. I have to get everyone to where they need to be, at the right times, knowing what they are supposed to know NOW and not a moment sooner or later. Hmmm.
The demons I wrestled with in the earlier weeks were more of the ‘aargh, this isn’t perfect, the pace is faltering, this could be better’ type. I subdued them with a quick “Yeah, you know what? Tell me about it after the first draft is done” to the solar plexus. They were pretty easily vanquished.
This week I suspect I’m going to be wrestling a different demon and I’m going to have to find a similar move. How do i defeat the ‘you’re getting it all wrong. This is a big mess AND you’re running out of time!” Demon?
Watch this space!