Ah, Friday. So difficult not to just check out mentally at work. You know, since my work is so fulfilling and interesting and all that. It should be a pretty eventful and stressful day, because I have 51 people I manage and of those people 5 of them are extra. Today I have four people on vacation and four people called in sick. So, I am down three people and still have the same amount of work to do. Yay! Go Team!
In other news, my Nanowrimo Novel is at 9300 words. I'm currently averaging 2325 words a day. This is well above the 1667 words a day needed to complete the 50,000 words in 30 days challenge. My Goal is actually 1923 words a day since I lose 4 days in the month to resting on Sundays. It's crazy because 9300 words seems like a ton but it amounts to about 15 single spaced pages in Microsoft Word. That seems kinda meager to me when I reflect on how difficult it was to write all those words. According to many published authors, the more you pratice the skill the easier it is to do. Stephen King described it as teaching your brain to enter a waking dream state and then transcribing what you see there.
I agree that it is more than just thinking and then typing, but I think in the two hours a day I spend (on average) writing my Nanowrimo Novel, I have only achieved something similar to this state for a few minutes at a time each day. I think it's great that I'm even able to come close to what these great authors describe as how they write. It makes this whole experience worth it.
The fear of not finishing is ever present though. There are times, however, when a different fear takes its place, the fear of getting to 50,000 words, but not being done with my story. The more I write and the closer I get the more these two fears change top spots in the back of my mind. At the same time, if I manage to get to 50,000 words, whether the story is done or not, I'm going to be celebrating.
My current goal is to be at 13000 words by Tomorrow night (since I don't write on Sundays). that will put me just above target.
All in all, this experience has been awesome, even in the first 4 days of writing I've already learned a lot. I would definately recommend this event to anyone who is even remotely interesting in improving their writing skills.
Thanks for reading!
2 comments:
Well, you're doing better than me, I'm only up to 8,000+.
I definitely hear you on the two alternating fears.
Now that I think about it, November is actually kind of a terrible month to be doing this. I got my wife's birthday, my sister's birthday, Thanksgiving, and I'm sure there's something else. Ah well, we're enjoying it :)
You can make it man! Keep on it. This last week is the perfect time to catch up and cross that 50k mark.
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