The Dreaded Week Three
Word count for week two (day 21): 40,150
Words today: 2,839 – after not writing a single word in two days, I wasn’t going to bed (or writing this post) until I hit 40,000.
The Writing Process: Oh Week Three, I know thee well!
Week three is where loose strands of hope come to die. It never fails that somewhere in week three, November gets demanding and the story stale. My wins throughout weeks one and two have come to an end. I was so proud of getting my few words in here and there, but alas, the day of no new words had to come eventually. In this case, it was two days. At least this time around it didn’t come as a surprise. My wordless two days were mostly because of real-life obligations, and so while my story lay suffering on the sidelines, I was actually very productive in the world that pays my mortgage. So still a November win even if it’s not officially a NaNo win!
The Story So Far: Definitely hit several ruts that made me feel like I was really just trying to get to event milestones and not really enjoying the journey. Not a good sign, even in a NaNo draft. I think I’ve been lingering over a few problem areas for these past two weeks, but have just been pressing forward with it, figuring that I can solve it later. Anyways, since I just came off of my two-day wordless streak, I really wanted to get some good gusto going. I don’t know what triggered it, but I suddenly realized the lack of vorpal in this story. “Vorpal” seems like a very key word for delving into Lewis-Carroll-land and definitely a literary crime if I don’t use it. So I spent a good deal of time just taking into consideration what “vorpal” means in the context of the world(s) I’ve created. Of course, now, it’s so obvious! And it fits so well with what I have. I’ll still have to go back and make some readjustments, but future me will deal with that, probably even tomorrow.
For Week Four: 50,000 words, do a victory dance, and then crash.
I still want 45,000 for this weekend, so even if I drop the ball again during the week, I can sweep up that final win next weekend. I’ll get there, no doubts about it; especially now that I’ve got my new mantra: When in doubt, make it vorpal!
If you’d like to find out more about my progress, I have been trying to do daily posts on my personal blog: http://newellbooks.weebly.com/blog and my stats can be followed on my NaNoWriMo participation page as well as Twitter @olanthea.
Happy Writing!
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