NaNoWriMo 2020

Day five (yesterday here) wasn't the best. I managed to get 684 words down after putting my daughter to bed, so not that bad. But worse was I woke up with this self-doubt and no motivation at all. So instead of getting up to write an hour before work, I stayed in bed. I started thinking like "why am I doing nano? I keep thinking I can write good stuff, that I'm creative and have good imagination. But this is just crap. Why am I even bothering? No one is going to want to read this. And if they do, they'll think it's horrible. Might as well stay in bed, more useful use of my time"
Self-sabotage much?

 

A. E. Lowan, November really doesn't like you. Maybe next year just take the month of and see the world instead...

Last day here. I'm nowhere near 50k, but i should make my secondary goal, which is to top last years 31k. Just 1200 words to go. Which is about 2 hours worth of writing.

It was a less education experience than last years edition for me (which was my first). But that's probably because it was my second attempt. I did notice many of the same things as last year. A few random thoughts:

It takes me a while to get into a story. The first few days of writing were slow going and felt a bit wandering, if that makes sense. As the days progressed I got more confident and my speed picked up and now seems to have stabilized around 750 words an hour. Funny thing about this number seems to be that it doesn't seem related to how I think the writing is going. Some days it feels like a slog and I need to force the words out and others it's a breeze. But after two hours I'm still at around 1500 words.

My outline will need some rework. The story is slowly diverging from my original outline (which is fine by the way). I discovered a few things about the characters and the plot took a few different turns. So I'll probably revisit the outline somewhere beginning of december. it's no big deal now, since it's only minor things at the moment. But a small difference at the start will give make a big difference towards the end.

I need a break. If I write today (and I will...), then I'll have written each day in November. A few days only had half an hour of writing for 300-ish words or so. But it's still writing. I'm noticing that as we draw near the end, I'm getting exhausted. I think I'll go back to writing 5-6 days a week and just goofing off the others. And I'll probably aim for 1k words for each of those days, instead of trying to get to 1.5k words. It takes the pressure off and makes the pace a lot more sustainable.

My month was a lot more chaotic than last years. Last year, starting on the 12th of the month, I hit my stride and managed to write 1000+ words each day for the whole month. This month, I never got into that flow. The word count is all over the place, all throughout the month. On the other hand, the lows are less low than last month, so there's that.

And finally, I think to win NaNo, I need to find more hours to write (or learn how to write faster...). Which is difficult to do at this point in my life. Maybe my novel should just become a run-away success and make me enough money to write full-time.

 

I had a chat with my wife. Turns out, she's really nice As for the kids, no need to remember their names, I can just number them...

I did actually continue writing yesterday. After a day off on tuesday, I got something like 300 words done. Not all that impressive, but good enough to keep the momentum going. I'll pick up speed again next week or so. For now, I'll just do enough to stay in the story.