So I didn't make my original resolution for last year. That's fine. As far as I'm concerned, I still wrote 30,000 words I might not have written otherwise. It may be 2013, but I'm going to keep pushing through... and contemplate a new name for this blog...
I've got to apologize--mostly to myself--for not writing much lately. I believe I mentioned this in a previous post, but I was worried my writing would come to a halt if I figured out graduate school. Well, I think I did. I hope. This came a week and a half into November, so I never got far past 15,000 words for the month. Some of my application deadlines were December 1st, so I had a very short span of time to research the professors I wanted to work with and which universities looked promising, update my resume, get transcripts, secure letters of recommendations, write a statement of purpose, yadda yadda yadda. I've applied to eight schools now, I believe. It's disappointing because I really REALLY wanted to finish NaNo, but if I missed the chance to go to graduate school once I knew what I wanted to do, that would have been entirely stupid on my part. I need to move past this limbo I've fallen into. And so, no writing.
I'm back though. I'm hoping I'll have more time to write, now. I will be facing potential interviews for grad school; I already know I've got one at the end of this month and my advisers anticipate I'll have at least a few more, but most schools are just now starting to look at applications. I'm hoping the traveling for them won't be too disruptive.
My plan, now, is to try to hit 1,000 words a day. That shouldn't be too hard. It's less than the 1,667 I needed each day in November, and I hit at least 2,000 words most days I did write. I'm hoping that will be manageable.
Today I read through what I've already done. I'd lost track of what I wrote in November. It was a little surreal reading those passages because I felt like I hadn't been the one to write them. I barely remember it. That gave me the unique opportunity to read what I did through a different lens. It's often hard to read my work the way someone else would. I tend to get caught up in seeing 'behind the curtain.' I might remember what I'd been thinking at the time, including any hesitations I'd had with a section, or else I can't shake the impulse to find the problems. It's pretty distracting, but that didn't happen this time. I suppose it's because I didn't get linger on anything for long, because I had to keep going. Anyway, the point of this is that I enjoyed reading it this way. That's very encouraging, considering I'm hoping other people will enjoy it, too! I'll have to keep writing like this, if only to read it the way others would later.
I am now caught back up on where I was, and I wrote a little today at my writing group. Between what I wrote after my last post here and what I wrote today(not much, I hope to write more tomorrow), I've tacked on an additional 5,000 words. That feels pretty good. It puts me past a third of my final word count goal. It may still take a while longer for me to get acquainted with some of my future plans, but I don't think that should delay me much.
Total Word Count: 32,823 (36.5% of final goal, approx 93.8 pages)
