NaNoWriMo: Day 29 -- DONE!

It's true. I really finished, one whole day EARLY (you can get up off the floor now, Mom).

By any word count, I have managed to surpass 50,000. It's interesting to note that each application adds a little bit differently:

Microsoft Word = 50, 519. This was the toughest and the one I used as my count of record this month. I figure if MS Word grudgingly admitted I'd hit my daily word count, I had it made by any other standard.

NaNoWriMo Winner Validation Engine = 50,646. Bless their hearts, they count hyphenated words individually. I've been known to indulge in an overly-hyphenated style now and then.

Google Docs = 51,570. No idea what they're doing to reach this number. The only thing I can think of is that I have an interesting minor character who stutters, especially when she's excited. Which is a lot. Google must be counting each partial word as a whole. So democratic!

Off to enjoy a much-needed hot shower and bask in the satisfaction of being done. That should last about 1 whole day before I'm itching to do some re-writes.

NaNoWriMo: Day 28

The end is in sight! Well, actually, I already know and wrote the ending to my novel a few weeks ago. That's a very different experience than I had last year, when I never actually got to the end, so I've been filling in large swaths of the middle for a couple weeks now. I'm also ahead on my word count, which is probably the first time in my entire life I've not procrastinated on a writing assignment. (Yes, mom, it's really true. You finally are witnessing your eldest child in a 100% prepared state.)

All of this feels weird, but good. I'm used to being very linear and not knowing the ending until the end, but what I've been writing has been interesting, and the gaps in plot slowly fill in -- often in ways just as surprising as if I'd been writing toward an unknown ending.

HUGE props to Moxie Sis, who became a NaNoWriMo winner yesterday with 50,002 words. I'm so proud of her!

I should cross the finish line tomorrow. You still have time, if you're behind!

NaNoWriMo: Day 26

Happy Thanksgiving! I have a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which is that an item on my personal big goals to-do list got checked off yesterday: I wrote a piece for NPR. In the middle of NaNoWriMo. And some other chaos related to horrendously-leaking roofs and other stuff.

My point is, you can write under just about any conditions, any personal situation. Every year, the NaNoWriMo Web site features stories about people who pull off a 50,000 word count in spite of being deployed in war zones, moving house, and having babies (I can't remember that woman's name, but anyone who blast throught the last couple thousand words of NaNoWriMo in the middle of labor has my respect.)

If they can do it, so can you. So, no slacking today -- sit yourself down to really good food with friends and family, but make sure you sit yourself down for some writing, too.

NaNoWriMo: Day 22

It's been a rough writing week, and I'm a little resentful. It was supposed to be easier. I mean, I hit the halfway point in the word count -- yay! But it was also the week of applying myself, in the actual sense of "I applied my butt to my chair and forced myself to write...something."

My characters were stuck in a 5th-floor, walk up apartment for two whole (writing) days helping a friend move in. For the Iife of me, I couldn't figure out what to do with them -- they were cleaning the fridge for cripes' sake! And installing cast iron bathtubs. And eating a communal meal of cornbread, chili, and pie. It was PAIN. FULL. But then a mysterious stranger saw my heroine from a window in a neighboring apartment building, an invitation to an embassy ball was hand-delivered, and the story was off and running again.

Lesson? Don't give up. Your subconscious will find a way to dig you out of "filler content" days, and often in unusually fruitful ways. So what are you waiting for? Go apply yourself already!

NaNoWriMo: Day 15

Last week, I mentioned that I played a song on repeat for one entire writing session. Well, that's what I've been doing ever since, with a handful of songs from The Story, Bats for Lashes, Imogen Heap, and the soundtrack from Let the Right One In. I wear headphones so I don't drive the Boy Scout nuts, but it has surprised me. I've played whole albums on repeat before (most notably while making covers for our wedding program a couple years ago), but I've not focused on a single song. Since an average daily writing session is about 1.5 hours for me, that means I'm repeating one track 20-25 times.

I think it may be the writing equivalent of a physical meditation exercise. Sometimes when I'm working on a project that leaves my mind free to wander -- like baking or sewing or gardening -- time stops for me. After some initial stream-of-consciousness drivel, I don't think about anything in particular and suddenly, 3 or 5 hours have passed in a blink and I'm calm and happy.

Some folks get the same benefit from a mantra or a drone (maybe that's why I like Great Northern bagpipes so much). The song on repeat is freeing up my mind to do what it needs to do. It's been a struggle to sit down and make myself start writing these past several days, but I've been contented within 15 minutes of a session and I've a great sense of satisfaction at the end.

What gets you through something you don't want to start?

NaNoWriMo: Day 12

Sleep dep: it's what got me through 2 days of word count in 1 day today. Thank you, leaking roof that woke me at 2:15 AM this morning, triggering paranoia that buckets weren't in place and causing me to get up and check. Very special acknowledgements to the loud drip, drip, drip that kept me awake after that to the point where I just had to get up and do something...so I wrote NaNoWriMo.

I'm about 150 words ahead again after 2 days off. Tuesday was date night and I only had to write 400 words to get to the required total to date for Day 10. I blew yesterday off. I'm pretty sure that I feel much better than last year at this point in the month, when it seemed like I was constantly behind. (Getting ridiculously sick for 3 days will do that to you. Swine flu, I spit on you -- ptuhy, ptuhy, ptuhy!)

I obviously have to go to bed now :P""""""

NaNoWriMo: Day 8

This past Thursday, my co-workers and I had a little happy hour to celebrate a successful major release earlier this week and I had a lovely bottle of Guinness before I went home. Now, I don't drink alcohol much, so I stayed tipsy for a while. In fact, I rushed home because wanted to write while tipsy. I was loose, and happy, and creative, and besides -- didn't BRILLIANT writers crank out amazing prose and poetry while inebrieted?

I won't know for sure until December, but I doubt I wrote the equivalent of a new masterwork. (Remember, NaNoWriMos don't read what we've written so far except to pick up the thread for the current day's work). I do know that I wrote a term paper in college while severely sleep-deprived once, thinking that at 4:30 AM, it was the best term paper in the history of the world and realizing during a frantic edit session a half-day later -- after a 5 hour nap -- that it was dead horrid.

Whatever gets me to the daily word count. Special shout-out to Moxie Sis, who I hope is still going strong after a fire-hose-of-prose beginning. She's got to be at least 25K words by now -- after just a week. Obviously, she has something to get out of her ;)

NaNoWriMo: Day 5

Major goal for this year: try for a beginning, middle, and end.

Last year's effort, while fun, resulted in something like that script Ricky Gervais "finds in a treasure chest" in The Invention of Lying; while full of exciting events, they don't really hang together (e.g., humans attended a wedding on Mars during the 14th century) and the transitions were abrupt to say the least. Not that I noticed this problem with my fledging novel of 2008 until after I re-read parts of it in December to determine if it was worth crafting into a real book. Remember, editing is anathema to NaNoWriMo-ers!

Now get back to your notebook/computer/smart phone/scrap paper and crayons and finish your daily word count!

NaNoWriMo Day 2: I'm ahead!

By a whopping 300+ words. But hey, at least I'm not behind. For some reason, I felt compelled to play The Story's "Angel in the House" -- just the title track -- on repeat all through my 1.5 hour writing session tonight. It didn't even go with the scene I was writing and I only heard it for the first time last Friday. NPR Music had a Halloween stream up from its member stations and the song was in the mix. But it's got a compelling bridge (to me, anyway) in an alto-friendly key, and the kitties didn't seem to mind when I belted it out several times along the way.

Hey, whatever gets me to the day's minimum word count.