Keep It Going
I don’t think I’ve tried to do anything continuously for five days before. I’ve even given up working for five days a week. But I’m feeling pretty good about this. Today is likely to be my first proper trial though, as I have stuff to do this evening. I’m very aware that I’ve got a whole bunch of events coming up which will wipe out whole evenings and days. There’s improv jam tonight, Pub Poetry (which I run) on Monday, Gorilla Burger on Thursday and then my niece’s birthday party, lunch out and another party in the evening on Saturday. That’s just next week… I don’t want to skip out of events because then I’ll just get resentful and nothing will work.
Sunday was really fun, especially after the splendid night before and I finished the day with Lego. Monday was fine – get up, swim, eat, write, Lego. Tuesday was back to work, but I managed to get a thousand words or so banged out at lunchtime, which means I’m close to writing at double my usual speed. This not editing lark is a lot faster to get out! Wednesday I sorted the same, and again topped it up in the evening. So I’ll get lunchtime today, but really any other time. It makes me a bit anxious.
I’m finding that setting my timer for half an hour is fairly reliably spurring me to eject a bit over a thousand not entirely awful words. All I’m doing before posting the next part each evening is a spellcheck and a really basic sense check. I know there will be many errors and misused words. On the whole I’m happy to accept those mistakes and roll them into the story. I did that last night when I accidentally capitalised ‘Watchers’. It’s helpful to the story development.
Where’s It Going?
Speaking of story development, I don’t have a plan. I do think about the story quite a lot, while swimming and bumbling around. But it just confirms that I’m really not a planner. As soon as I get a ‘fixed’ point for the story I write something that contradicts it. Damn my mind. I’m conscious of keeping the story going at a steady pace. It might be a bit slow, but my natural inclination is to leap to the end, and with nearly 40,000 words to go I’m keenly aware of how much space there is left to fill. Sorry if it’s slow. I hope it’s a bit funny too, and a bit sad. And a bit intriguing. Without knowing what’s going on myself, I am also entertained and intrigued… a joint process of discovery.
How’s It Going?
Well. I think – I hit 12,990 last night, which feels pretty awesome. I do feel tired today, and that’s mostly because the sense and excitement of doing NaNoWriMo is making me really wired and I’m not attending to my technology downtime and bedtimes. That has the potential to get very bad very quickly. This morning I feel weary because I went to bed after midnight and went swimming this morning after waking up an hour early because of dreams. I was visiting a friend in hospital – they’re a nurse, rather than a patient. To get there I had to enter aa vast building with confusing escalators and elevators, and am finally directed to the very top floor. Look for doorway 10. Lots of bad signage, the door I’m looking for is 9, 25 and 10. That leads me into corridors of lightly scaffolded flooring and broken straws which looks hideously dangerous. I can see all the way down to the ground. One of the nurse’s colleagues laughs hysterically as I slip and nearly die. NHS cutbacks.
Anyway, I’m trying to take charge of it: coffee is banned once more (I’d slipped back into daily coffee a few weeks ago) as is too much sugar. Tech death time will be 10 o’clock again. Unless I’m writing… in which case that’s wifi off at least. Aaargh. It is, of course, crushing into my Lego and reading time but something has to give of course.
I’m enjoying the experience of doing it, and I am excited by it. Discovering that I can twat out nearly 13,000 words in four days is useful, good to know information and it’ll inform my future writing and how intimidating it can be to start something new. Makes me wonder if I should be stepping up The Desert Crystals as well…
That’s probably enough scribbling to wake my brain up a bit. Soon I’ll be stamping on the keyboard again.
