Today has not been a good day NaNoWriMo wise. Last night I stayed up until after 5am (going to bed after Barack Obama's speech - well done him!), and I wasn't able to get many words written whilst I watched the election results come in - just another 148 words. I didn't get up today until around 1pm. I did try to get some writing done today, I really did. I thought about having another crack at doing 10,000 words in 5 hours to get back on target. But I just couldn't get into the right mood for writing today.
I think the fact that I'm a long way behind my target was getting me down. Yes, I know I'm far ahead of the official NaNoWriMo pace, but I've told everyone that I want to do 125,000 words this year, and I don't want to face defeat. But I have to admit that I did had quitting urges today - I remember back in April when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to finish Script Frenzy that it was such a relief when I finally admitted defeat and didn't have to worry about it any more. I started to think about what that relief might feel like again if I were to give up on going for 125,000 words...
But I am not going to give up. This is only day five, and I don't want to be a quitter and face the humiliation of defeat, I want to be a fighter! Yes, I know that writing 125,000 words in a month was going to be tough right from the start, and now that I'm behind it's going to be even tougher, but it is not yet impossible, so don't write me off yet. I have a plan...
Today I've only been able to write a token amount - 239 words, which brings me to 15,451 words (12.36% of target). The original plan was to write 5,000 words on each day that I wasn't working, which meant that by the time I went to bed on 16th November I needed to be on 80,000 words. So, what I've now done is consolidate all of my word debts into one easily manageable daily payment. If I write 5,800 - 5,900 words each day (just 800-900 more than I had originally been planning to write on each of these days) I'll hit 80,000 words on the 16th. If I write any more than that on any given day, then there'll be fewer words that I have to write on each of the remaining days up to the 16th. This now feels much more manageable than trying to do 10,000 words in one go.
And so I'm now going to go to bed, and come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to take on the monster that is my novel once more...
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