Distractions and hurdles

Distracted by the election, I'm 300 words short of my 10K word goal of the day. I hope to make up for it tomorrow, so my stretch goal for Nov 7 is 1967 words. It's a word count I know I can do Friday night or Saturday night, but I'd feel much better if I can do it tomorrow.

I need to call it at 2:50 am on a work night and get some sleep. I'm confident that I can catch up. It is, after all, only Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Nov 7 marks the official 1-week mark of NaNoWriMo. That's 1/4 of the way there if we're counting weeks. 23% if you want to be accurate about the progress.

I've been fairly on track so far and have been able to maintain, for the most part, the momentum in the writing. I'm making myself write daily and the novel has started to come to life. I've rarely had to look at my notes and when I do, I see that I'm already shifting the scenes around. I'm allowing myself to add more text to elaborate on a scene that happens earlier in the story, but I'm not allowing myself to delete and re-write scenes. I'm also adding scenes that I missed from my notes.

Working with notes in a creative writing project is actually new for me. However, it has done its job really well in keeping me on track and providing me with material to write when I encounter a hurdle and feel stuck. Anyone who is reading this right now and doing NaNo, I would recommend an "outline my story" night if you can't think of what happens next. At the very least, plot out the story arc and know how it ends. (When I was outlining, I knew the beginning and the end before I figured out the middle).

Current Stats: 9700 words.
Nov 7 total word goal: 11666 ( I would need to write 1966 words before Midnight to make this goal).