Cruising past the midway (NaNo Day 17)

Posted by Frank Cote on November 17, 2017
Posted in: Novel writing, Writing. Tagged: , , , , .

I’m a few thousand shy of the number I should be at today, but I’m not worried. Things are going great!

I missed a day or two, or three in the last little while.   Things have been a bit crazy at work and a bit busy at home, and well, old habits die hard and I’m lazy.  I also procrastinate so on at least one of those missing days I decided not to write early on, didn’t write while at work and once home my brain simply shut down.   I could have forced it.   I’m 50/50 on whether I should have.

I’m not too worried about the count right now.

When I get things right, I put in a solid 2000+ words a day (Yesterday I hit 2300 without too much trouble) and when I get it wrong (but still manage to put words to the screen)  I can struggle through and get 1667 words.

On the WIP side, I’m at an exciting part of the story, so putting down words isn’t an issue.  I know where I’m going next, and next and next and I want to get there, so when I start typing, it just goes.   That feels good.

The draft is pretty cringe inducing but I’m seeing some gems in there.  Maybe.  I keep reminding myself to not care about it too much.  I know what I have planned on the re-write, so I can just go ahead and get the shitty stuff out on paper right now.  It will only help.   There’s been a few places where I can see myself writing something bad and doing it anyway, knowing that in the rewrite I will fix it, leaving notes on how to fix it and that the words are basically a sign post to what’s really supposed to be there.  It’s all good.

I haven’t had a 4 or 5K day yet.   I kind of miss the writing jams the old NaNoWriMo crowd used to have on weekends.   Time marches on.   I still get good vibes now when I sit down and start typing.   That’s a remarkable thing.  Twice now I’ve found myself smiling at something I find neat that I’m putting down.  That’s a good thing.

So.  I’m a bit behind, but I’ve been in worse places and it’s not that far behind.   I feel good.   That 50K is mine and likely I’ll need another 20-30K more besides before I can finally type “The End”.