Today is the 3/5ths mark for NaNoWriMo. Participants keeping pace should hit 30,000 words today. I pounded out 2,355 words this morning, bringing my 18-day total to 44,519 words. That is about the 9/10ths mark, and indeed, I’m now about 14,000 words a head of pace, or more than 8 days. It is a good feeling, and if I can hit my average on Friday and Saturday, then I will pass the 50,000 word mark on Saturday morning, November 21.
The first half of the morning was a struggle for me. I had a long work day yesterday, followed by a meeting of the Arlington Writers Group which is always fun. But I was starting to feel sick the night before, and last night before bed, I had a sore, scratchy throat. I virtually passed out when my head it the pillow and didn’t wake up until my alarm went off at 5am–which is unusual. Kelly suggested taking a break today if I was sick, but I was feeling okay and I wasn’t going to let a sore throat get in the way. I headed downstairs to get started on Chapter 19. My plan for the chapter had been two scenes, but as it turned out, only one of them got written this morning.
The scene in question started out slow and for the first half of the writing session, I had more or less resigned myself to under a thousand words for today. It’s okay, I told myself, I’m slightly under the weather, and besides, I’m so far ahead I can take a breather. The big thing was getting up and making the effort this morning. And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind, when I saw a twist to the scene I was writing that would be a fascinating one to explore, one which would add to the drama of the story line without breaking the spine of the plot. So I headed down that twisted pathway and I ended up wrapping up the scene with over 2,300 words. The big question now is where to fit in the second scene that was supposed to be part of this chapter. I could still include it. It was going to be a shorter scene, anyway, and has a twist in it that ties back to an earlier chapter (16, I think–I don’t have it in front of me). I still haven’t decided.
My outline for part 2 was fleshed out in detail through chapter 19. The remaining chapters in the outline are just brief paragraphs and so at some point today, I’m hoping to expand those to the level of detail that’s worked for me so far through this process, and carry them through the end of Part 2. And there’s a small chance that I will write that extra scene at lunch today so that I can begin fresh on Chapter 20 tomorrow morning.
My confidence is high on “winning” NaNoWriMo. So much so that yesterday, I purchased the 2010 NaNoWriMo winner’s t-shirt from the online store. My confidence is growing on my ability to complete the first draft of the novel by mid-December. The biggest hurdle coming up for me is to continue pressing forward without NaNoWriMo’s daily milestone looming over me.
Here are the stats for today:
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Wow, your graph looks sexy. I was nice and ahead of schedule then allowed myself a few rest days of only writing a small amount. I’m currently on 32k but I feel the need to be much, much more ahead than that.
Congrats on winning – I’m being pre-emptive but seeing as you bought the t-shirt… – Hopefully I’ll be a winner alongside you before November is up!
Hey, 32k is till 2k ahead of schedule–more than day–so you should be proud of that. It’s really tough to stay consistent day in and day out and other things definitely suffer. (I haven’t read a word of fiction this month, and this despite the fact that the Nebula awards are now open for nominations!) Thanks for the congrats, and I imagine you will, indeed, cross the finish line before November is up.