My word count for NaNoWriMo currently stands at 26,233. This places me just slightly past the half-way mark for the 50,000 words needed to “win” NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, it does mean I’m a few days behind, even for just the minimal level of success, rather than my personal goal of 60,000 words in November.
It has been a lot harder than I had imagined to force myself to try to write 2000 words per day. Part of it, I’m sure, comes from not actually knowing what comes next — I’m thinking now that if I had outlined the plot before starting writing, I’d be better at churning out prose, whereas I currently sit and stare an the screen until I manage to plunk down something. And what I do write is terrible. It’s not the sort of thing I’d ever voluntarily show to people, it’s that bad, although I do have one reader as I go. I think the story is shaping up okay, thanks to comments from my sole reader, but there will have to be massive rewrites before it’s viewable by anyone else.
My big concern now is that I don’t know how long this story is going to take to tell. I’d love nothing more than to finish November with a complete draft of the story, so that I can set it aside for a while and work on something else. I like the story that is developing, but after 30 intense days working with it, I think I’ll want a break… and yet, I don’t want to leave it until it is done. Given how far along I am in the story at 26,000 words, I’m becoming more and more skeptical that it will be finished by the end of the month. Perhaps if I’m lucky I’ll manage to tighten up my writing and move through the plot more efficiently in the next 25,000 words.
