50,435 words. The novel is nowhere near done, but I’m stepping away for a while.
The beginning of the week was going well. The new outline seems to be working better. I’ve identified a few holes in the new one. The good thing is I know how to plug them after a few second’s thought. My plan is to take a break from this story when NaNoWriMo is done and work on the outline for another idea I have. I’ve got extensive notes, so I will be in a good place to pick back up.
Then I hit the five day stretch I was dreading. The combo of my birthday and Thanksgiving went well because I made the best thing possible for that day – reservations! I managed to hit my word count, and catch up to where I was supposed to be after not writing for four days the prior week. Friday I was off having fun with friends at the Dickens Faire, so I only got about 600 words done. Which left me Saturday and Sunday to finish 6,000 words.
But wait, I hear you cry. You still have Monday to work on your story. Any other year I would say yes. However, Monday is also the 30th anniversary of my father’s death. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster of a year, and everything is crashing down. I’ve been feeling stress and depression building, and I suspect that I won’t get much done today.
So what have I learned from this NaNoWriMo?
- November is a horrible month for me to attempt something like this. I may consider doing a private one during a different month in the future.
- I can comfortably write 500 words a day, 1,000 if I want to stretch, but above 1,500 is a strain.
- I can write daily.
- That said, skipping one day and making up for it the next can do more for your sanity than powering through.
- Outlines are good for finding your destination, but not an absolute road map.
Will I do NaNoWriMo next year? That depends on what I have going on at the time. I made the choice to do it this year over working on something else. All I know is that I made it through this one, even if the first draft isn’t near complete. I’m content with that.