Gentle Wit

Words Written: 8,497 (2,017 from yesterday)
Total Word Count: 25,110 words

Yesterday, I arbitrarily set a goal to hit 20,000 words by the end of the day. I was very pumped up to do just that and I had a wonderful scene in plan for what I wanted to write. I did a few household chores instead because I knew that I could easily spend all day writing and I was expecting Sarah and Fay to be coming over. Meanwhile, I had some rather unpleasant personal events go down and they put me in quite a funk and pretty much killed my desire to write at all. After our outing at the park and all, I was in a much better mood. But whether it’s the change in time or the long walk at the park or both, I was exhausted by 7:30 and so while I did attempt to reach my goal the tired won out and I didn’t.

So this morning I woke up with the full intention of not only getting my 20,000 words but shooting right passed that and heading full on to 25,000! So, I am quite proud of myself. I am pleased with how the story is evolving at this point and I’m also very confident in my ability to finish this year’s Nano. (Which, admittedly hasn’t been too much of an issue for me in the past.}

And now that I’m all done with that — and my wrist is starting to ache a bit — I am off for the night. More as it comes. :-)

[EDIT: I am aware that the word count meters aren't showing up. It's not me, it's the sites they're from. Can't do much about that until they recover.]

Words Written: 2,883
Total Word Count: 12,120 words

And to that I say a resounding: “W00T!” I actually hit the 10K mark last night before I passed out, but I’m still quite a proud me.

I have realized some, well, interesting things about this novel. Namely, it really is awful. It could well be the worst thing I have ever written in my entire life — and this includes all the poetry I had to “write” for a Modern Poetry class in college. However, I knew it was going to be badness incarnate. No one writes the award-winning novel of renown on the first try. No matter how experienced you are at writing, you have to have drafts and editing. (Ok, probably there’s some people out there that maybe did this but I’m willing to bet if you read their novel you’d think it could use some work.)

Case in point, I wrote a nice run-on sentence in this nearly 3,000 words and upon hitting the period to cap it off immediately found myself wanting to start the next sentence with: “What I mean is . . . ” This is a very obvious clue that the sentence preceding was not of the good. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I go back and read it tomorrow I’ll be astounded at its utter suckitude and also marvel at how I don’t know what in blue blazes I was babbling on about.

I’m not ashamed. This is actually the hardest Nano I’ve ever attempted. Mostly this is because it’s not fiction — in fiction when I write myself in a corner, I can just do whatever I want to write myself out of it. Since I’m writing about real life events and my own thoughts and reactions to them, I can’t really do that. I find myself running out of steam halfway through whatever point I’m trying to make. (Generally this is because I stop at that moment and when I come back I can’t figure out where my thought process was going . . . or if I even had my brain present when I was having a thought process.) Unlike the last Nano that I attempted non-fiction, I’m not angsting over everything. And I sort of do want to get a point across that’s a bit more complex than “zomg my life iz teh sux0rz.” Frankly, I never had trouble finding something to write about — it didn’t necessarily make any more sense than this current train wreck but I had tons of fuel. (Vitriol!) And it was also fresh in my mind from being pent up that it just spewed forth without much thought.

Actually, that’s the other thing I’m realizing, I didn’t really think about all this enough. That’s kind of the fault of (a.) not starting to really think about this until the day before I sat down to write it — well actually hours before — and (b.) the quantity vs. quality that Nano requires to finish. But again, I can deal. Even if I scrap 99.9% of what I write by the end of November 30th, at least I finally sat down and wrote it. Which in its essence is what Nano’s all about.

Anyhoo, rambling aside, I apparently have taken up a challenge extended on the Albany regional board at the Nano site to write something everyday for the next year. (Starting this past Sunday with the beginning of Nano.) Not really a challenge per se, I pretty much have done this for years. But I am going to also attempt to chronicle all that here because I know you all care THAT much as far as I’m concerned writing here counts.

In other non-writing news, I’m still friggan sick and it sucks. Pity me.