23 days in. I figured I should
try and fit in one more update before the end of my 2014 nano journey. I’ve actually been plugging along at a pretty
good rate. With one week left to go, I
am well past the 40,000 word mark (hovering just over 43,000 this morning) which
allows me to kind of coast through to the end.
I tried to push myself to go above and beyond on some of the days that
were going well so that I could get to a point where I could get away with a
lower daily minimum towards the end. My
daughter only has one day of school next week and we’ve invited family up for
Thanksgiving, so I knew ahead of time that the end of the month was going to be
rough for writing time. (I wonder why
they chose November in the first place.
Seems like a tough month to write a novel in, but perhaps that is the
point.) Rather than try and run a
marathon at the end, I thought I would try a few sprints to get a bit ahead of
the game if at all possible.
It’s funny. A week ago, I was
having a hard time even imagining the endgame, but I had a couple of days there
when the words just came at a pretty good clip and I didn’t allow myself to
stop when I hit the bare minimum. My
record for a day last week was somewhere just over the four thousand word
mark… (I thought it was pretty darned
good, at least.) My word count jumped up
quite nicely, leaving me where I am at now.
Which, for the last two days, has been a curious place. I’m not sure if I burned myself out a bit (or
more than a bit) making that harder push, but the words have been slow
going. You’d think only having to hit an
average of 800 words a day versus the regular 1,670 would take the edge off of
the stress a little bit, let the words flow more easily. Apparently, though, I work pretty well under
deadlines and more stressful situations.
(Maybe if I fall behind, the stress will kick me into high gear
again. Ha.) At any rate, I am – at least for the moment –
ahead of the game. And even if I am
struggling a bit right now, it is a good feeling to have, considering how
worried I was that I wasn’t going to make it.
Who knows… Maybe I’ll even plow
on straight past that fifty thousand word mark.
I’m not going to automatically stop at that point if there are days
left, even if I’m a little burnt out.
In non – nano news, I
received a poetry acceptance this week from Arsenic Lobster. It was a breath of fresh air since I was
running with quite a few straight form rejections and it is a place that
published my work back in the small press days (he says as if he is some kind
of mainstream breakthrough artist these days…) – always nice to see a
publication from that time in my life that is still around and thriving. It’s amazing how a string of rejections can
impact the actual writing…
I’m keeping
to my promise, though (to myself) to not deal with the submission side of the
game while in the middle of writing for nano.
Which is much more difficult than I thought that it would be. But for this month at least, it’s all writing
and no dealing with the other side of the “business.” I have a feeling I’m going to need a couple
of days off come the first of December.
I could use some hobby time that is a little more mindless right about
now. Then I'll dive right back into sending out my words, waiting for them to come back to me.
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