NaNo Progress Report #3

My progress calendar has become quite colorful.



The beginning of a novel is the easy part. A nice “hooking” incident, introduce characters, introduce setting, introduce some problems that characters need to deal with. It’s an easy 15-20K words. In the case of this book, 15K. Since last Thursday, I’ve been floundering around a bit. I know where I want this story to end, but getting there is, well, a journey. Usually, I would have Eric read, we’d talk, he’d solve my plot problems. In this case, I’m stubbornly going it alone, at least until the end of November.

I had planned on taking last Saturday off due to fall frisbee league finals. I ended up not getting started until late Friday night and figured, Hey, I have Saturday as padding. I wrote the majority of “Friday”‘s 1200 words on Saturday morning, between midnight and 3am. On Sunday, I was feeling the aftereffects of Saturday. While I only played two games, they were probably the most painful ultimate I’ve played in a while. A weather system pushed through AZ on Fri-Sun and left me pretty achy. On Monday, I wrote 2400 words and was just a little behind my goal and right on the NaNoWriMo pace of 20K.

Then Tuesday and Wednesday happened. No one’s fault but my own. On Tuesday, EverQuest 2 launched their latest expansion and I partook. Wednesday, I spent taking care of the VOTS site. I finished up fall finals updates and set up registrations for New Year Fest and winter leagues. Some of that I’d been putting off a bit, but mostly it was the deluge of information that I was finally given in order to get things going. I wrote ZERO words on both days. I’d like to say I was giving my brain time to work through plot problems. That’s only slightly true.

I managed 2300 words Thursday and 2000 yesterday. The NaNo site says I need 1830 words per day to finish on time, so all hope is not lost. Trend I’ve noticed: While I’ve been doing most of my writing at night between 8pm-1am, I don’t pull a 2000+ number unless I get some done during the day. Getting 500 before noon, for example. Which I’m going to go do right now.