nanowrimo2013

For anyone paying attention, the above banner is the standard banner and not the winner variant. I never realistically was going to hit 50k in a month with the pace I was setting but that was fine by me. I was trying to learnt to write off-the-cuff and, more importantly, the discipline to maintain my writing as a daily thing. Which was hard. And is hard. I’ve kept it going. I only missed I think 3 days maximum in November and made up for those with additional sittings/words on other days. I just missed my self-set 30k. I sat down too late that night and ended up breaking it a few hours later (at midnight I was 29k+ from the previous day so I was basically on-target). Ah well, was still proud.

Now November is done. The pep talks are all read. The regional Facebook group is essentially disbanded. All the music that was previously appropriately inspiring-yet-not-distracting-to-write-to feels old and uninspiring. I’m starting the feel the sluggishness because I’ve ran out of all external motivating factors. I didnt mention, but I gave myself the added goal to break 50k with this novel regardless AND to complete the first draft on top of maintaining the daily writing habit. In fact the habit may be the only thing keeping me going at this point. I’ve dropped my daily word target to 500-800 words so it seems feasible and I cant go to bed without feeling like an ass if I miss it.

It’s 3am and I have yet to write my tenth word for today before bed. I’m at about 34k. I hope I have enough content to break 50k, man. 40k is looking reasonable but I’m going to need to discover another ‘event’ to propel the word count beyond that, if I’m being entirely honest with myself.

Sucks.