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)