Day Five

So it's Day Five of NaNoWriMo, and so far I'm kinda kicking butt.

Last month I mentioned how I signed up to try to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.  I was a bit worried about how attainable this might actually be.  Thankfully, D has been cooperative enough so far,  so that between playing independently some in the morning and taking decent naps (other than yesterday and today) I've been able to more than meet my daily word counts.  In order to write 50,000 words in 30 days you have to write a minimum of 1,667 words each day, and so by day 5 you should have a total of at least 8,335 words to be on track.  As of tonight I'm up to 11,905.  WOOT!

Luckily years of daily blogging seems to have made me a speedy typist, which is probably the sole reason I'm this far ahead.  I timed myself tonight and was able to crank out 1,330 words in 30 minutes, or about 45 words/minute.  I've never timed myself typing before, so that's fun to know.  Also luckily, ideas have been coming quickly enough as well.  One key piece of advice that's constantly thrown around during NaNoWriMo is that you need to "kill your inner editor" (at least during the month of November) since it's pretty darn near impossible to get out 50,000 words in a month if you're also stressing about making them a decent gathering of words that actually make coherent sense let alone be interesting and intelligent.  As a very novice writer, I don't think I've yet developed that inner critic nor a good sense of what's "good" writing vs what's "utter crap" writing and so I'm more free to just put stuff out on the page and see what happens.  I'm still discovering if this is something that might become a long-term hobby or just a one-time try.  I'm also still discovering what kind of novel I'm trying to write, whether it will be a one-piece novel or if I'll need to add more stories along with it to complete the 50k goal, and if any of the subplots I'm considering will materialize into anything.  I hardly did any outlining or planning before November 1, so it's been interesting to literally just go day by day as far as what I think I'll write, with little more than  vague idea as to the general storyline.  I'm figuring out things I'm good at, and all the other things that I didn't even think about and have trouble with (like actually defining my characters and giving them history, past experiences, etc).

At least I have my chanchito and plot ninjas to help me figure it all out.  ;)