NaNo Update Week 2

Things are still going well.  Being forgiving of myself is still working very well.  I've realized that if I get to 30,000 words this month, I'll have felt accomplished.  This is 1,000 words a day, which is completely doable if I have an hour to myself. It also means I'm right on track.  The outline is also still working well.  I'm about to finish two pages of an eight page outline.  So that means if I stay at this pace, I'll get it done the end of December (or middle of January with traveling for the holidays).  Writing on my phone has gotten better over the last few days, but it's still not ideal and I've found that I'm much less likely to be in the mood to write on my phone than I am likely to be in the mood to write at night when I'm tired.

I'm not sure how well being motivated is work for me.  This is unexpected since I figured being excited to write is always a good thing.  Turns out it's a good thing when I can scrounge up the time to write.  But if I can't find the time, the excitement starts to bubble into an itch--a build up of creative energy without an outlet.  And then it turns into guilt.  I really could do the full 1,667 words if I would just suck it up and stay up another half hour.  Or Why am I not writing on my phone right now?  This is precious time that I'm wasting, even if I would have to spend it with a tiny key board.  So it's turned into a war between being motivated and being forgiving.  Thankfully, the forgiveness is winning so far.

On Thursday, I took the baby to a write-in at the Edgewater Workbench, which is a workshop for artist.  It smells pleasantly of wood shavings and hot glue.  It was a really low key affair, just my friend, Jim, and the two people that own the shop.  The baby and I came in, made introductions, and caught up a bit.  The baby sat in his sling, staring at the 3D printer as it jerked back and forth.  With the first onset of fussiness, I turned him around to sit in my lap where he could use his distracting cartoon eyes to stare at Jim.  Then Pooh Bear came out.  Pooh Bear makes more jingling noises than Jim and was more readily accessible for gnawing, and was therefore far more interesting.  Then we were out of distractions and, with the next wave of fussiness, had to leave.  I clocked our write-in time at 45 minutes.

Jim apologized that it wasn't more productive, which confused me because that was the longest I'd been able to sit and write in weeks despite the distractions of catching up with Jim and asking the baby, "What do you see?  Yeah, that 3D printer's pretty cool."  I also met about half my word goal for the day.  I wasn't upset at all, and I felt accomplished rather than regretful or itchy.

Oh how my life has changed.

We ended up getting a shout out on NaNoWriPod.  I feel famous.

Jim pointed out that I do this weird thing with NaNo where I'll stick with the project and finish off the draft after November, then go back and edit it.  It's been kicking around in the background of these posts, but I've never explicitly stated that that's one of my NaNo goals.  This doesn't end in November.  It starts in November.