I’m sort of giving up on NaNoWriMo this year. I started off behind and stayed there. For awhile I was only a little behind, enough that if I really put in some extra work I could catch up. So I tried to do that. But Last week I started to not feel well, and to sleep poorly. I was having stress about how I would have time to get my extra words in and all the other things I need to be doing. My house was disgusting (even worse than normal).

So I’m no longer going to try to catch up. Now I am making it my goal to continue to write every day until the end. And the past three days have felt much better. I’m getting my life obligations mostly dealt with and I’m making good progress on the novel (but in a 500-1000 word a day pace instead of a 2500 word a day pace I would need to catch up.)

I have won NaNoWriMo once so I know the level of work it takes, and I know I can do it, but I’ve decided the cost is not one I can afford this year. As usual, I’m very happy I signed up and tried, and I’m going to continue working. I’ve gotten far enough in to better understand my characters, and I’m getting to the more fun parts of the story (the first 5000- 8000 will probably get cut). In fact, I might make it my goal to continue the daily writing at whatever word count I can handle each day until the first draft is completed instead of just through November. The NaNo website stat page tells me at this pace I will finish 50,000 words on Dec 18th, but I’m sure I’ll need many more words than that to finish.

So I will still log on for some sprints, still love the community and the goals, but I’m adjusting for my health. I’m grateful that it got me started on a book that I’d kept putting off beginning work on though. That’s worth it.

It’s the first day of NaNoWriMo, so naturally, I’m procrastinating by writing a blog post and looking for a fun word progress widget since the official NaNoWriMo website doesn’t have them anymore. I finished up my short outline last night. Just the 7 point plan style, and the last couple points are sort of ‘I don’t know how they get to this point, but here’s what I’d like to happen here’. It will be interesting to play and figure out how to get there along the way.

I don’t try to stay up and start writing at midnight anymore. Not after a full workday. I just don’t have it in me. So I’m starting today.

 

13295 / 50000 words. 1% done!

I found this widget here, then I got to do some googling to learn how to get a html code to work on my WordPress blog. Something I guess I hadn’t done before now because I couldn’t get it to work at first. I like learning new things, but time to stop procrastinating and start drafting!

P.S. I’m karabu over at NaNoWriMo.org if anyone is looking for a writing buddy.