NaNo Review

I consider this National Novel Writing Month a success, even if the official website doesn't.  I hit my goal of 30,000 words.  I stayed confident and compassionate.  And, most importantly, I established some good routines that work with my new lifestyle.

I missed a few days in there.  Thanksgiving happened and so did some other day where I had no time and then got too tired.  I logged onto the site to see I was 2,000 words behind plus the thousand for the day, and I set about making it up.  "I can do it," I said.  "I'm amazing!"  I then proceeded to not do it.  I made my daily 1,000 word goal, but 3,000 was not going to happen.  "Tomorrow," I said.  "I'll do it tomorrow.  I haven't lost any ground."  The next day I didn't do it either.  The day after that I got frustrated.  "Would I still be happy with myself if I changed my goal to 28,000 words?"  No.  I wouldn't.  "Well, okay.  Let's accept that this deficit exists.  If I spread it out over the remaining days, how much to I have to write every day to hit the 30,000 word goal in the days I have left?"  Turned out it was 1,666.  (Or close enough.  It was like 1,672.)  "You mean the NaNo word goal that everyone else is doing?"  Yep.  "Wow!  I can do that.  I'm amazing!"

Turned out that the timing worked out really well.  With Thanksgiving, my husband had a few days at home and decided he was going to take over the baby's afternoon nap.  Maybe the baby would sleep in his bassinet if someone other than me put him there.  Worth a shot.  Turns out he won't sleep in his bassinet, even if someone other than me puts him there.  However, he ended up sleeping on my husband instead of on me, giving me nap time with both hands free and a couple hours to write.

I won't bore you with more news on my baby's clinginess or his terrible napping habits. 

I will tell you that after that day of frustration--a definite low point for the month--I came back strong.  And not just in terms of word count.  The writing also improved.  I've been asking myself why this is.  I'm definitely getting to "the good part" where things start to fall apart for our hero.  Scenes are more dramatic, more lyrical, more emotional.  But I don't know why the emotion was completely absent in earlier scenes and here now.  It is supposed to get more dramatic, but not by that much. 

It could be that the middle of my story is saggy, and now that I'm getting into the home stretch, where instead of setting up the dominoes like I was earlier, I'm now knocking them down.  The prose flows, the word count comes faster, it's easier to tap into the emotion.

It could also be that I've been painfully out of practice.  My writing muscles had all atrophied and it took three and a half weeks of NaNo for me to build back some muscle.

I don't know, but I need to keep this momentum rolling into December.  The plan is to keep up this pace of 1,000 words a day until I leave for my holiday road trip.  At that point, I'll reassess how much I want to write during the trip.