Win NaNoWriMo 2008

At 18303 I am still seriously behind schedule, and if make 25k before the end of the month I have achieved a lot.

That was the bad news.

The good news is that in a marathon session last night I wrote over three thousand words, and my daily requirement is still below that. With heroic effort and dedicating my weekends to the keyboard it can still be done.

I dislike heroics, but it can be done.

Though I missed out on a word count yesterday because I passed out…I managed to crack 30k today, beyond the halfway point for the month but right on the halfway point for the dates. This is excellent, the novel is taking shape, and I’m beginning to work on better scenes. I am still lacking detail, as much of my text is coming in the form of dialog and action; I need to go back and add location and character descriptions a bit more. I’m also skipping over some heavy character development scenes during word wars because they are going to take quite a bit more deliberation. My morale is leveling out to a consistent “happy” instead of highs of exhilaration and lows of self-doubting, so that’s a MAJOR step in the right direction. I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, a neon, flashing sign that says “You can be creative and still take care of work, family, and friends – and now that you know this there’s no turning back!” although the lights are kind of blurred together from this distance.

At 11 000. Seriously behind, with 3000 words per day still a good target, yet to be reached.

Ouch. The need for sleep and the obligation to work seriously interferes with NaNoWriMo!

Last night I racked up the words again, and reached 8000. I won’t get to Chris Baty’s challenge of 20 000 for Thursday, but I’ll give it a bloody good try.

In the meantime my characters amaze me with what they can achieve when put in a tight spot with a short deadline.

everything seems to be stacked against me.
my poor laptop is in such bad shape that I can’t close it
the hinges are broken and I just had something that fell out of the screen … don’t ask me what …
but I can no longer take it with me when I go on the road for work, and since I have a trip the last week of the month I have to have whatever I’m going to write, done by the 24 …
I do have the 27th off, but I’ll be at my sisters so, again ..no laptop
so… that means I need to write 3000 words a day
and I’m way behind

my support group is falling apart and my characters are totally out of control
what next??

Just this weekend I wondered how I was going to get out of it. Would I just announce that I was giving up? Would I just say nothing and let November 30 slide by?

That was on the weekend. At just under five and a half thousand words I’m not even nearly on any schedule, but it still seems doable, especially after last night’s two thousand words. I suddenly have two characters, and dialogue and plot for at least another two thousand words, a dastardly trick to play on the reader, and beyond that a fantastic backdrop to work on (although the plot gets a bit vague.)

...Spent far too much time today on laundry, cleaning the house, and listening to people talk down to me. The end result? A much lower morale than I’ve had for a week and a half now, an identification of one such culprit of damage to my self-identity and creative balance, and no clue how to deal with it. * sigh * Endless drama. I did end up writing another 500 words today, but I’m not too keen on them since I’m so down this evening. I thought chocolate was supposed to cheer you up! :P

Tuesday I have another write-in, so I’m hoping tomorrow during lunch I regain some pride at the page and can show up to do this thing.

Almost got kicked under the table yesterday for being an overachiever. I can’t help it…this year I’m in love with my characters, haven’t done as much planning as usual (character sheets were left undone, the scene plot notes were only incomplete sentences for each one, and I’ve been largely basing entire scenes on a string of witty dialogue that popped into my brain), and the words are flowing. By all rights, that shouldn’t be the case, but it is, and who am I to stop it?? I’m at the pure, unadulterated GLEE portion of the NaNoing month, where I’ve accepted that all is crap and you know what? That’s okay! Getting to the page and words on the page is really the most important thing right now. It’s far easier (and more fun!) to edit later than stare a blank page and wait for the montage or novel elves to finish it for me. I think part of it comes from the fact that I’m surprised with the people who approve of the novel writing, pleased that I’m able to tell some people this year that I’m writing a novel, but struggling with what to tell people I’m writing…my friends get it (sort of) but family is not so much right now.

I managed to hit 50K at around 10:30pm on the 7th, meaning I completed NaNoWriMo in under a week, beating last year’s record by 2 days! Woo!

My current wordcount is 62,348 as I continue my insane march towards 200K… I’m just glad that I’m not trying to write anything legible.

I think I did have a plot at some stage, but I can’t remember what it was. I’ve veered away from it in the last couple of days to have my characters attacked by undead bananas and told stories about a ghost haunting a sack of barley.

At 3133 words there seems to be life in it yet, but still falling way short on the word count.

Show, don’t tell. Learning the same lesson yet again.

I didn’t know my head was this weird.