I can explain.

It was a long week. I was still getting the hang of things (ha! still am), and trying to figure out just how exactly to balance everything (dinners, shopping, cleaning, dog-caring, etc… oh and writing). And so one day, I just forgot to get dressed. Little things, you know. They have a habit of falling through the cracks. By the time I realized it (about 3:00), I decided it wouldn’t be worth it to go to the effort of getting dressed, only to get my pajamas on 5 hours later. So.

Homeschooled kid: “I’m a homeschooler.”

Non-homeschooled kid: “Wow! So do you do school in your pajamas?”

Yes, non-homeschooled kid, for the first time in my life, I have taken advantage of my premiere homeschooler benefits and done “school” in my pajamas. The whole day.

It pretty much rocked. But don’t worry, I don’t intend to make it a habit, lol. 🙂

So, on the NaNoWriMo report…

I’ve written about 16,900 words total so far, and made my daily goal (which I rounded to 1,700) every day. Except sort of last Friday, because I knew what with shift at the Humane Society and all there was no way I was going to be able to fit writing in and my brain would be way too dead. So I wrote almost 3,500 words on Thursday in an investment for Friday.

I’ve actually kind of slid out of act 1 already, so… I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll see.

Freak out! I’ve never ever ever suffered from writer’s block a day in my life, and I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s true. The words were always just there, and my only trial was that my fingers were less than half as fast as they needed to be to keep up with my brain. But this week, I’ve had constant, class A, dictionary example worthy, writer’s block. Aaaaahhhhh!! What do I do? I had the infamous “week 2 syndrome” all week long. “My story just isn’t working! My characters won’t cooperate. I don’t know why I thought this plot was any good. What am I even doing? Is it too late to scrap the whole thing and start over?” I even, once, contemplated momentarily just giving up, telling myself “this is just too much for you to handle. Just give up.” But somewhere deep inside me I have a stubborn streak that cannot handle giving up or failing, and so that moment was rejected. But. I was thinking to myself the other day, “now that NaNoWriMo is almost over…” and then I checked myself. Nope, not even close to being over. It’s just day 5. Ug.

Fact: It is easier to write 3,000 words than 1,700. I think so, at least. In past NaNoWriMos, I have 2-4 hours to sit down in a quiet room and write. Some days I wrote as much as 4,000 words. And I didn’t understand what people were talking about with the whole “writer’s block, week 2 syndrome, feeling like throwing your manuscript out the window, etc.”. Life was simple. I loved whatever story I was writing and enjoyed taking the time to write it and never felt inclined to throw it out the window. But now… squeezing in a couple hundred words at a time, I realized that, since it takes me more than 15 minutes to really get warmed up and into my story, writing in snippets is far less productive. Think of it this way: if I wrote 200 words in the first 20 minutes, but then after that wrote 1,000 words an hour, writing 1,700 is pretty much as easy as writing 3,000. And once I’m into the swing of things and past like 1,500, I just want to keep going, and I write faster and faster…

Current story frustration: My lead is plain as wallpaper. Working on that, but she doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. I think she has different ideas. My supporting cast, however, seems to have taken it into their heads that this story, they’d like to go for a rainbow effect. Startling, interesting, but not a little frustrating.

Caffeine front: So far, I’ve consumed 4 Coke Zeros (as far as I remember) in 9 days. Not as bad as it could be, but I’m certain it will get worse.

Sleep? What’s that? Actually, I’ve only stayed up to 10:40 writing, and that was on a bad day. Most days when I “write into the night” I don’t stay up much later than 10:00.

WOOT! I broke a record! A personal one, albeit, but a record. My standing record of words per minute was about 1,000 words an hour, which was what I clocked in on a good normal day in previous years. Today, in the course of a self-challenge word sprint, I broke it. I told myself, “Okay, Kat, here’s the deal: Pie-in-the-sky is 1,000 words in 30 minutes, but I’m as certain as I can be without trying it that it won’t happen, not unless you suddenly acquire a super power of typing like lightning. So the more reasonable goal is at least 700 words in 30 minutes.” I set my timer, fired the engine, and wrote 750 words in 30 minutes, which is a 50% increase from my previous record. After a 15 or so minute break to let my brain rest, I went back and wrote 850 words in 45 minutes. I’m super pumped!! I don’t think this is going to become my regular writing speed though… but it has helped me to get back into the habit of “no finessing, just keep pushing forward”.

I posted some pep talks… This year (as you NaNoists know) NaNoWriMo is encouraging members to post words of advice and encouragement to the forums to help their fellow writers along. So I posted an adapted version of my post, Write From The Hip, and then today I posted another pep talk I’ve been working on in spare moments on my phone, in the car, unwinding from a crazy day, while tying my shoes… (not really 😛 ). You can read it here if you want, and if I have the chance I might post it here. 🙂

And… things are finally starting to come together. Okay, I complained a lot about my belligerent characters and rebellious story, but on the whole, I’ve hit a slick spot where everything is flowing, things are finally making sense, and I have a clear idea of where I’m going. And I have a couple classic Kat twists up my sleeve. <- always boosts morale. 😀

Okay, so I got a little longwinded on you guys, so sorry. Looks like a just wrote 1,000 words in 45 minutes?? Is this me?? Who the heck just took over my fingers? It’s kind of awesome and scary at once…

Thanks for supporting me and if you’re reading this, you waded through this whole post, so thank you for bearing with me! You guys are awesome!!!

We’ll see how it goes from here! Thanks for following along, too!!

~ Kat