Halftime at NaNoWriMo ‘09
Well, actually halftime was 2 days ago, but it’s still close enough for government work.
More than 2 weeks of writing lie behind me and even though I am quite comfortably ahead of the official wordcount goal for this time of month, I still feel a bit disappointed with myself because I had hoped to do so much better this year.
Unfortunately I didn’t keep my statistics from last year, but I do remember that there were several days where I didn’t write anything at all and serveral days, especially towards the end of the month, where I scrambled like mad to catch up. I made it to 54.000 in the end, if I remember correctly, but it wasn’t exactly fair sailing all the way and I knew it could have been a lot more if I hadn’t procrastinated and dragged my feet quite as much. But since I had started 4 days late I was still happy to have made it over the finish line at all.
Now this year, because I already knew it would be possible for me to write 50.000 words in a month, and because I wanted to do better than last time, I set my goal at 75.000 words – and even more important, I wanted to finish last year’s novel. Because it is all nice and well writing so much stuff, but I know if I don’t finally finish this thing now, I probably never will. Not that that would be such a loss to the world of literature, since it is never going to be published anyway. But for my own sense of fullfillment (and because I am prone to start all kinds of things, but have a hard time sticking to one thing long enough to actually finish it) I just need to do this. I don’t care if I never get around to edit it and let other people look at it, but I want to be able to say that at least once in my life I wrote an actual novel from start to finish.
The good news is, I was actually able to pick up the story where I left it off a year ago. That wasn’t something I was quite sure I could do. So I am happy that at least it isn’t already dead in my mind. And I am making headway with the plot. I know what is left to write and I roughly know where I want to go with this, instead of just letting it meander more or less randomly. And I do feel that the end draws closer. Not quite close enough to see it from where I stand now, but maybe just around one or two more corners.
The bad news is that I have written only 17.000 more words for this story so far. The rest of my wordcount comes from the other story. The one that I started on a whim on day 3 of the contest, because for the life of me I didn’t feel like working on the original one that day.
So now I am working on 2 stories at the same time. Every night when I start up my laptop I have to decide which one to work on this time, which in a way feels like a bit of a luxury, but it also stresses me out that every time I choose “the other story” is a day less to finish the original one.
Also, one would think that if I write 2 stories, I shouldn’t have a hard time racking up a much higher wordcount than last year. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work this way. I might still make it to 75.000 words, but it will be a close thing.
And do you want to know the punchline? It’s not because I wouldn’t have time to write. I have oodles of time. Well, actually I should be working most of the time, but I’m not (which is a tale for another day). For the last 2 weeks my parents were on holiday and I had the whole house to myself, nobody nagging me or reminding me to do “something useful”, nobody I had to even talk to at all (except for the dog and she is not much of a talker). Fourteen days of uninterrupted writing time all to myself. In theory, at least.
And even now that they are back they don’t really bother me all day, because they assume I am up here in my office working. In theory I could have written another 1000 words since breakfast easily. But I didn’t. And that’s not only because I am plain lazy and love to distract myself with all kinds of useless other stuff – although both of these things are true. But the biggest reason for that is that I can’t seem to write in the day. For some reason I always, always only start writing in the evening and then keep going until I have trouble to keep my eyes open and string a coherent sentence together. Quite an annoying habit, really.
But there are still 2 more weeks to go and hope springs eternal and all that shit. I do still think that I have a fair shot at finishing both my stories in time and maybe even reach my unofficial personal wordcount goal. And even though, as you can see from the graphic to the right, I already skipped one day this month, I do hope that I will also achieve my other goal of writing each and every day for the remainder of the month. We’ll see how that goes.
(FYI, if I was allowed to count this post towards my wordcount, that would be a whopping 964 words more already…)
I am sure you will finish both your stories in time. Good luck)