NaNoWriMo 2013

So this year's NaNo attempt is not looking great for me. I've not hit any of my daily goals and have fallen more and more behind each day. The weekends were an opportunity to catch up on word count, but there are are myriad of responsibilities I didn't have the luxury of putting off for the month.

As it stands, knowing some of the commitments I have around the holidays and my work schedule... there's no way I'll hit 50K by the end of Nov 30.

What does this mean?

It means I'll finish this marathon at a pace that won't break me, even if I don't get a finisher medal (or rather NaNo Winner icon).  The most important thing I'm going to get out of this is that I didn't give up and finished the writing.

Using Scrivener, I'm setting a new due date - Dec 15. This allows me to have a daily goal of 1,666 with a couple of  0-word days built in.  I'll be fine if I continue with my current pace/daily average.

I can give a myriad of excuses for why I'm not going to finish in time.

• I have an intense job with a longer commute. It also is a new job which means I can't take a few days off of work to focus on the writing. This is also a job that has required me to stay late or go in early a couple of times, so it's not as flexibly accommodating as my situation last year. 
• Craig and I are finally hosting a party at our place after 2 (nearly 3) years of nothing more than a few friends over for a board game night. This meant a top-to-bottom apartment cleaning that has been long overdue. We even found ourselves getting something new at IKEA to store wedding/xmas/bday gifts that we've received in the last 2 years so that they'd have a proper home. 
• Reiterate bullet #2 in regards to the bedroom and overflowing closets. It's time to purge what I don't need/use and find a space for what I want to keep. 
• It's mid-November and I have no more weekends that I can completely devote to writing. 
• I need to sleep. 

When all is said and done, life happens and sometimes, we just can't get away for 30 days and write with abandon. 

However, I can't find a good excuse to stop writing before I hit the 50K mark of this book. There's no excuse of why I can't prioritize the writing over shopping, TV watching, Facebooking, or Candy Crushing. There's no excuse for not sitting down and writing for at least 2-4 hours every day in the attempt to hit that 50K word goal sooner than later. I know if I don't have a deadline, I'm going to put off the writing one day at a time until it's September again and I'm thinking of preparing for the next NaNo run. 

So I'm going to carve out as much time as possible to write out 50K.  Then, I will evaluate my progress in the book itself, and will set a new series of goals that will push me to finish this book, then go back and revise/flesh out book 1 with a smidgeon of more clarity than I had last year. 

Having a second novel written is a damn good consolation prize for finishing late.