Even though I slept in till 1pm [I'd been averaging about 5-6 hours per night when I need 7-8 for the past few weeks] I managed to churn out about 7,000 words so far today and I'm currently at 17680 words total. Not a huge deal yet but it's the small things for me right now that mean the most. I feel really good about it and I'm right back on schedule for NaNoWriMo. I'm also now into chapter 4 of my book and I'm really excited about where it's going and how it's taking on a life of its own. I also got some really good advice from Gini Koch [Thank you Captain!] and I've been having second thoughts about using NaNo as a driving force for me to get stuff done. I've begun thinking of it more in terms of just a benchmark rather than an end goal. I can understand why NaNo was created and how it can be a good way to jump start someone into writing, but as a means to write an entire novel you can then send out to publishers in December? Hell no. I knew this all going into it but I got so excited about the community and how excited others have been that I haven't really taken that step back. I'm going to take Gini's advice and do the Club 100 thing, 100+ words per day for 100+ days with a couple of floater days per week and keep a log of what I'm writing each day. In this case, slow and steady does win the race.
It's not like I don't write as often as I can, but I have a tendency to let other things have more importance and my writing, my happiness tends to get pushed off to the side. I also go through spells where I can't write or don't feel like it and I do other things like crochet or knit instead. It's always good to have those periods to relax and work on something else, but I'm realizing that too much time off is bad. I have another story, Jabberwocky, which is in the same universe as Thistledown, that I'm roughly halfway done with and I haven't worked on it in almost a year. I got lost the last time I'd tried to work on it, all the memories of what was going on in that story, all of the little nuances that I didn't write down, I have to re-come up with. I think I really need to sit down and open it up, take it out, and find a starting point where I can jump right back in.
For right now, though, I'm good with sticking with Thistledown. The plot and the characters are turning out much better than I expected, considering I thought it was going to end up a fluff piece. I'll have to drop in an excerpt at some point for you to read. :)
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