wow, that deadline is looming large

The good news: Due to the long holiday, I've had more writing time, so my NaNo word count has gone way up (40,902).

The bad news: I've got exactly four days and four and a half hours to get to 50K, and I'm seriously running out of steam (and story).

The analysis: The goal is still do-able - 9098 words in four days, that's a little over 2000 words a day, and 2000 words a day is about what I can manage on a regular writing schedule.

This month has been anything but regular, though. I've had one setback after another - traveling, sickness, work, and a host of other complications, some of which I've partially dealt with. I thought it would be easier this year, since I had done NaNo last year, so I knew what I was in for. Or thought I did. It's just the quirkiness of my life that I can never predict, and I've found it hard to focus on anything for any length of time.

As for the story, it's bad. Really, really, really, really, really bad. But my first drafts usually are, and according to NaNo rules, that's perfectly fine, but last year's story wasn't this bad. Nowhere near it. This one is just...it's so jumbled, and it almost reads like several mini stories linked together, and I keep changing my mind about character's names, so they have different names in different sections. I think my internal editor never quite went on holiday while I was working on this one, and that's why I've struggled so much this time around. Last year, once it realized there was no stopping me from attempting this insane endeavor, it just threw up its hands and stomped off and left me to it. This year, I think it stuck around just to see if I really meant to do it again, and it's been laughing at my efforts all month.

I hope it doesn't get harder the more times I attempt NaNoWriMo. I don't want to hate writing. Really, I don't.

The biggest mistake I made this year was not having more of a story outline like I had last year. Last year's story was much more fully formed in my head before I wrote it. This year's was far less so, and I lacked confidence to fully wing it. I came up with an outline two weeks into it this time, and really had to fight the urge to go back and rewrite whole sections that I had typed out pre-outline. Oh well, next October will be set aside for outlining, so that I've got some sort of story path to follow in November.

I'm now going to make brownies (Bob found dark chocolate chips for me) and get in another hour of bad writing.