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I’m not counting my chickens or anything but there’s two days left of NaNoWriMo and my wordcount is 48,385.
So. You know. I’m feeling a little…. INVINCIBLE!
You can’t stop me, life! You can’t slow ME down, priorities! You can’t– oh wait, both kids pooped and it’s almost dinner time and I have to bring the boy to karate in an hour? Right. So… I’m occasionally vincible. That’s ok.
I’ve read a bit about the use of “she said”s , both the pros and the cons, and while you really could come down on either side of the debate, I was two words away from today’s NaNo word count goal.
So you know what? She said.
It’s only three days in so really, it’s too early to make any predictions but what I’ve got going for me so far:
What I’ve got going against me is:
Anyway, I’m at 5100 words and the fam’s not back from their nap ride yet so I’m going to forge ahead and make tomorrow easier.
Or I could take a break and watch another episode of A Million Little Things. Can you believe the baby’s father is the other guy? No, because you don’t care? Well, I kinda do… for the 54 minutes I’m watching, anyway.
Off to a start that can’t be called good with 201 words all painstakingly typed out by thumb on my phone while I sat in my car in my driveway, where the Wifi miraculously reaches, with two sleeping children in the back seat.
This one’s gonna be hard.
It was touch and go there for a while. Not lookin’ too good this mornin’ when I still had 4,000 some odd words to go and a To Do List a mile long but… you know… you dig down deep and just like, totally blow off your To Do List and here’s what you get.
It’s only 20,000 words (20,031 if we’re being accurate) but that’s more of this story than I had a month ago and that’s something to be proud of.
Happy camping, writer friends. Maybe all your mosquito nets be undamaged.
I am just over 9,000 words away from meeting my adjusted Camp NaNo goal and it… doesn’t… look… good.
Unless I can write half of that today, in under 3 hours while multitasking some actual work stuff, I won’t make it.
So the question is: Readjust that goal again or take the fail and know that when my children get older I WILL have more time for writing again?
**UPDATE**: I wrote 4,339 words today which is almost half! This race ain’t over yet!
IS IT CHEATING if you change your goal to meet the reality of your circumstances?
I ask because I’m not sure. But neither am I sure that I care.
As I say to my students when they get a little too intense about a friendly game of dodge ball:
What happens if you win? Nothing. What happens if you lose? Nothing. There are no stakes other than your own enjoyment so ENJOY IT and don’t worry so much about the outcome.
I changed my CampNano word count goal to 20,000 because I think that’s doable, if still difficult for me to accomplish right now. Still, I think I’ll get more out of this experience if I can at least get close to my goal than if I fail miserably.
The real goal is to keep writing. Feeling good about what I can accomplish is key.
Before my first child was born, I told my OB/GYN that I was concerned I was a good strong candidate for some hardcore postpartum depression. She referred me to a therapist and suggested I see her before the birth so I could start working on coping strategies before the big event.
I spent three sessions of an hour each complaining about my mother-in-law.
Now, a good therapist–which she was not–would have read between the lines and addressed my issues with expressing emotion and how having a child was scary for me because it came alone with BIG EMOTIONS that I didn’t feel prepared for. My mother-in-law is a frequent expresser of emotions, you see. I did explain that. I did explain a lot of things. But when I said, “I don’t really think these sessions are helping me,” she said, “Well, you managed to fill the hour well enough.”
Let’s skip past the obviousness of her ineptitude and touch upon the most relevant nugget of wisdom for a busy person trying to fulfill a word quota for a Camp Nano project:
If you’re a good enough complainer, you can fill several hours–or several thousand pages–just with that. The good stuff, we’ll leave for next month when the pressure to perform is off.
Tell me more about my paycheck…
Also, writing is my best therapy. It doesn’t always make for great copy but it does force me to express and examine my issues several times over. And it’s free.
CampNaNo word count = 24,930 out of a goal of 25,000
I’d like to take a moment to thank… myself for setting a reasonable goal. I’ve got about a third of a strong story that definitely wants to become my next book. I can feel it struggling to get out of my brain and out into the world for others to judge and criticize.
Little book-to-be, I hope I can give you the time and attention you need to become fully realized. But if it doesn’t happen in the next two months, rest assured that there is another CampNaNo in July and I’d be happy to work with you again then.
Until then, let’s crank out 70 words of angsty teen dialogue and call it a month.
Love, Eda
I’m about a day and a half behind schedule and that ain’t bad for starting over on the second day.
I feel like the words will come easier for this WIP since it’s based on real life but I also think maybe the story will be lacking in commercial appeal. It’s a labor of love, challenge, and self-reflection that won’t sell for shit unless I find the magic editing potion that makes it more interesting.
But that’s next month. Right now it’s just getting the story out in as many words as I can think to use*.
*I don’t consider it cheating to refrain from any kind of editing that takes away words until after the 50,000 are reached. It’s efficiency, if anything. Right?
Eda J Vor 