Day 8 of NaNoWriMo

I am eight days into NaNoWriMo.  On the days when I have seriously put an effort into writing, I managed to put down about 2,000 words.  Unfortunately, there were a couple days when I could not shake a head ache.  I have learned the hard way not to mess with headaches, so I tried not to look at any screens for a while.  Unfortunately, that meant getting about 3,600 words behind.  The good news is that I am close to catching back up.  As of right now, I am only 1,600 words away from where I should be.  I feel pretty confident that I can keep up.

I am happy with how I am doing so far.  I didn't really have any expectations going into this.  I hadn't expected things would go perfectly, and had doubts whether I would finish.  Now that I am at least a week into this, I know that 50,000 words is entirely doable for me.  However, I think my feet will be dragging by the end.  Writing around 2,000 words a day gets tiring, especially when you aren't always sure what to write about... which I don't.  I usually spend a good fifteen minutes staring at the screen at the beginning of the day thinking "What can I write about?" because I'm simply stumped.  Jordan wonders if having started writing this ahead of time may have made this harder for me now, as at first I had no shortage of ideas.  He may be right, but I think this may be partially due to poor planning on my part.  The good news is that finding the time to write has not been as much as an issue as I had expected.

Although this is not my first large writing project, this one writes differently than anything else I've done.  It may explain why I am having some trouble thinking of what to write.  For a span of two months while I was in college, I would feel bombarded with ideas while I went to class, and then it would be no problem for me to write out around 2,500 words without breaks.  I don't have that this time, and I think that is because this story is really much more complicated than anything else I've attempted before.

I do think I can do this, but I anticipate that I'm going to be exhausted by the end.  Hopefully I'll still have enough in me to write another 22,000 or so in December, so that I can reach 90,000 words by the end of the year, as was my initial plan.

No new beads for my bracelet, sadly.  I tend to get distracted when I go to write-ins, so I've avoided going.  I'll be going to one this Sunday, hopefully, so I can pick up any that I've earned in the past few days.

NaNo Wordcount: 10,875 (21.8% of NaNo goal)
Total Wordcount: 28,175 (31.3% of goal... 80ish pages )

Days 1 and 2 of NaNo

I'm excited to be able to report here after my first two days of NaNo that I have successfully passed my 1,667 word goal.  I was going to start writing right at midnight on the 1st until I wrote a couple thousand.  In theory it was a good idea.  In practice... not so much.  My mind was a little sluggish, so I wasn't moving along very well.  I broke 1,000 words after about an hour and twenty minutes and called it a night.  I didn't want to feel dead at work the next day.

My strategy has since been to wake up early to do my first writing before my day starts.  That way I can get a good chunk of the daily word count out of the way early.  I figure that if I were to choose to write in the evenings alone and I didn't make my daily goal for whatever reason, I'd be behind.

One problem I found:  since I haven't been sure what to do with Allie's life, I've jumped around a lot.  I still don't know what to put in some of the gaps I've made, and it makes it challenging when I'm looking for something to write.  If I were to decide to work on a scene I hadn't finished, I'd have to figure out where the hell it is.  It's time I'd rather not waste.  I was actually going to write about how I needed a new program for writing to solve this.  I needed a way to chunk my chapters into individual mini-documents so I can rearrange things and find the scenes I need more easily.  Just as importantly, I needed to be able to access it anywhere I have the internet.  I've been using Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) and I can access that anywhere, but organization for my novel sucks on it.

What happened today can only be described as fate.  (Okay, melodramatic.)  I went to the first NaNo write-in at a cafe in town and the owners of a writing program showed up.  Evidently they created the program that our municipal liaison (ML), Michelle, uses and swears by, and they just happened to move from Florida to good ole' Bloomington.  They pop in quickly to say 'Hi' and then our ML explained their writing software to me.  It was exactly what I was looking for.  And it saves old versions of my novel in case I accidentally delete it.  It might be a little annoying transferring everything over, but I'm very excited to check it out.  It is called Yarny.  (https://yarny.me/).  I'll be testing it out this weekend.

I also got to start my NaNo charm bracelet today, which we can fill with beads at our write-ins.  Our ML started this so we can have a tangible reminder of our progress.  We get one regular bead for every 1,667 words we write, and we get a charm for hitting special landmarks, in general or on time.  I've got pictures of my bracelet so far.  It looks kind of empty now, but keep reading my blog and you'll see it fill up!  The word bead was for hitting 1,667 words on the first day.  Technically we were only supposed to take one unless we needed an -ly at the end of a word, or something similar.  Well.... I saw 'make' and 'believe' and I had to get them both.  Then I realized that there was another word if you flip it over, and...

Fate!  Sort of.  'Always learn' isn't as fitting for NaNo, but more likely than not it should have been gibberish.  It's not a bad thing to remember, either.

I am going to another write-in for about an hour tomorrow before meeting up with a friend or two from out of town.  Hopefully I can get a lot of writing before they come so I can get further ahead.  I wouldn't mind a couple thousand words of cushion.

Total word count: 21,187 (23.5% of final goal, 60 or so pages)
Total NaNoWriMo count: 3,872 (7.7% of NaNo goal, 1,936 words per day average)