Such an uncreative title, I know. But most of my energy has been sucked into NaNoWriMo. The counts are in, and in the past two weeks I've cranked out just over 24,000 words. People, I never write this much consistently in one go. I might write 5k one day, then 3 the next, and then I might not write anything other than blog posts and journal entries for a month.
Obviously, I'm not 100% satisfied with all of the words I've written, but the point is, they are down on the page now, where they belong, instead of floating around in my head where it's so easy for them to get lost. I've written an average of 2k every day for the past two weeks, and have only taken one day off (NaNo thinks it was two, but it wasn't. I just forgot to update my word count until after midnight).
There are a couple of problems with this: 1) it's taking away time normally spent knitting and designing, which is delaying the next pattern release and my Giftmas knitting. For those who have anxiously been awaiting the next pattern/the book I promised, fear not, it is still in the works. Realistically, though, I knew it would be a major challenge to get it out before Christmas, and now I see that it's pretty much impossible. The [Censored] pattern book shall have to wait until after New Years (this probably would have been the case even without NaNo, but this is just making it clear that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY for me to write the book, transcribe the patterns, create the charts, and do all of the necessary formatting--which is extremely fiddly, by the way--for 8-12 patterns in six weeks. Not on my own, at least.)
2) I am just shy of 25k, which marks the halfway point in the 50k that is NaNo. The problem is that I am 2/3 of the way through the book. I sense some serious word padding in my future.
Much as I would love to do NaNo on a typewriter, it is not practical for me to do so this year. I did, however, manage to resurrect my very first laptop (the one I got ages ago when I started college). It's slower than mollassas, but it gets me on NaNo, Google, and all of those other writerly time-sinks, and is just barely within the requirements for Storyist, which is the software I downloaded to write on (more on that next week).
It feels good to be this productive. I've struggled in a few paces, but I've discovered that I work best right after I wake up and right before bed. I usually do about 900-1200 words either before work or as soon as I get home. Then I hit a wall, start pulling my hair out, and go play Threads of Mystery on Facebook for a while. Then I'll come back, and tell myself, "You're only 400 words away from your daily goal," or "Another hundred words, and you'll break 24k" or whatever the next benchmark is, and I'll force myself to hit that target, even if the words are crap. And then I usually keep going and wind up with something close to 2,000 or 2,500 words when all is said and done.
The rampaging Rhino might still decide to scrap everything I've written, or to run down a completely different path. Or he might abandon me completely (he seems to be spending an awful lot of time with Theanab from the Typewriter brigade thread). But in the mean time, I'm going to ride this wave while I've got it, however small it is.
Baby steps. It's all in the baby steps.
That's excellent progress! Well done...
ReplyDeletemaybe next year for the typewriter.
Keep up the pace. You are nearly half way to the end and the month is not yet half over. Finally, don't pull put your hair, you'll go bald :)
ReplyDeleteBest of luck on NaNo and all your projects.
This is, hands down, the worst stretch of Nano. This week, right now. If you can power through this week, then you're over the worst of it, and you can slide into the finish. Doesn't matter how it's done, but keep aiming for that magical 50K. Clearing 25K is a hurdle, 30K comes easier after that. 40K is almost a surprise, then the rush downhill to the end.
ReplyDeleteYou can make it!