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Ok, so I’m separating the month into weeklong chunks rather than actually adhering to the conventional ‘week’, but who cares. This week was all about getting back to where I needed to be. Annnnd then the U.S. Presidential Election happened and I needed a minute. And then Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows was begging me to finish it. Also, the combination of those two was not pretty. I had actual nightmares where I went for a walk or a drive and ended up on a hill watching whatever town was below me being bombed. It was awful.
So, I’m not back to where I should be word count wise. In fact, I’m just about 5,000 words behind (mostly because I haven’t written yet today, but I’m about to as soon as I’m done here). We’re supposed to be hitting 25,000 today and I just crossed the 20,000 word count threshold yesterday. Still, I’ve gotten significantly farther than I did last year, so I’m not too mad about it all. However, I am going to keep this short and get right to it.
This week I finished that awful scene I was writing and moved on to the third character… where I’ve been ever since. Clearly, I’m eventually going to have to cut back huge chunks of this section since it’s already 9,500 words and will probably be closer to 13-14,000 by the time I hit the character change. I didn’t realize I had this much to say about this character, but somehow she suddenly became much more complex than I thought she was. Surprise, surprise. I think that’s my favorite part about NaNoWriMo so far, actually, just writing and seeing what happens to the characters. I don’t always know what they’re going to say or do before they do it. I just know that they have to get from point A to point B and a few people have specific things they need to do or say along the way, but a lot of it is just kind of happening, and that’s really exciting. Add this character’s complexity to the fact that she’s actually interacting with people (whereas the first two have barely spoken to anyone beyond themselves so far), and you can see how what was supposed to be a short chapter has ballooned into half of my current manuscript. Oops. Anyways, onward and upward!
And now let’s look at the notes I made this week along with my actual word counts:
(DAY) # – WORD COUNT GOAL / WORD COUNT ACTUAL (Daily Total) (+ Ahead/- Behind)
(Monday) End of Day 7 Total – 11666/9444 (2134) (-2222) (Tuesday) Day 8 – 13333/11848 (2404) (-1485) Not bad! Catching up! That makes two 2000 words days in a row! (Wednesday) Day 9 – 15000/11856 (8) (-3144) That’s right. I wrote 8 words. I think we can all understand that I was exhausted, etc. after staying up to watch the U.S. Presidential Election results. I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t sleep. (Thursday) Day 10 – 16666/12575 (719) (-4091) I’m still exhausted, and I need to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s haunting me and hanging over my head, and I just need to finish the last 500 pages because I can’t think about anything else. Also, my review of it is scheduled to go up in 2 weeks, so I kind of have to finish it. Also Also, I really want to finish it as well as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child before my copy of the screenplay of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them gets here next week. This problem has quickly spiraled out of control, as you can see. But I’m trying to write. I am. (Friday) Day 11 – 18333/12575 (0) (-5758) I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. #NotSorry (Saturday) Day 12 – 20000/14619 (2044) (-5381) Feeling supremely unmotivated. I started Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and it’s thrown me for a loop. Trying to get off this ride and back on to my own, thank you very much, so I can write. Broke down and opened up my copy of 300 Writing Prompts to get the ideas flowing. That sent me off on a tangent of looking at baby names, which eventually led to my breaking down and watching a movie (Love, Rosie), which made me bawl my eyes out, but ultimately kicked me off the Harry Potter ride and allowed me to jump back into my writing and actually do some quality work. (Sunday) Day 13 – 21666/17873 (3254) (-3793) Attended a write in! Whoopie! Also my biggest writing day to date! (Monday) Day 14 – 23333/20078 (2205) (-3255) Finally broke 20,000! SO EXCITED!