I’m feeling cautiously optimistic here: I’m on par (even a little ahead) right now with NaNoWriMo, and hope to put more words in the bank as buffer against the dreaded Slump that tends to hit somewhere during the second week. It’s amazing to learn how much writing time I actually can wrestle out of my schedule, without sacrificing too much. I’m perhaps sneaking an extra few minutes here and there at work to pound out 100 words now and again, but I’m still keeping an eye on my projects, so I’m feeling okay.
The freeing aspect really is the quantity-over-quality permission you get while doing NaNo. I don’t have to worry if the scene sucks, or the whole story: get those 1,667 words out today and fix it in December. Most of my short stories run between 1,500 and 2,000 words. I’m writing just over 2,000 a day right now. It doesn’t matter if I write three terrible ones for every one story that’s half decent, because that rate will still leave me with about 8 workable stories at the end of the month, which is still a respectable productivity rate. It’s also helpful to allow myself to spew all the editorial and backstory, because I believe characters get rounder the more you know about them, and that it shows even when you cut it all out in a later draft, because what you leave is what’s truest to them. I tend to forget this in regular writing time because the spewing is ugly, and I’m reluctant to spend my valuable morning minutes writing something I know I’ll cut.
I need to go check on work now so that I can jot down another paragraph or two once everything’s in order, but I wanted to let you know we’re off to a good start, at least. Also, I’m temporarily suspending Flash Fridays, but I will post some story excerpts here in the next day or so. Onward to more words!
NaNo Word Count Update: 6, 820 (154 words ahead)