NaNoWriMo Log #6 and #7: Damage Control
I saw this coming.
A few days ago, when I decided to aim for 2,000 words a day instead of the required 1,667 for finishing NaNoWriMo, I knew there would come a time when that safety cushion of extra words would come in handy.
That time came. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually very difficult for me, and this week they were particularly exhausting. In both days, I got back home at 11 PM absolutely spent after a full day of work, calls and meetings, without having written a single word of fiction.
I knew there was no way I would hit my 2,000 words goal in those days. Should I even bother at all?
Not long ago, I would probably have talked myself out of writing altogether. I would have promised to catch up some other day, then gone to bed without advancing even one step toward my goal.
This time, however, I decided to try something different. I convinced myself to write for just ten minutes before giving up. Even if I got just a few hundred words out of it, it would already have been better than nothing.
Once I get started, I realised I still had a little bit of energy to spend. The ten minutes became twenty, then half an hour.
I didn’t hit the 2,000 words goal in either day – not even close. But day 6 and day 7 combined brought me roughly 1,700 words. A full day of work. Thanks to my damage control strategy, I lost one day instead of two.
Combined with the extra words I had written in days 1 – 5, that was enough for me to stay on track to 50,000.
I survived the worst part of the week and there’s no catching up to do.
Time to start building up that safety cushion again.
Best sentence I wrote on days six and seven:
“On the other side of the town, in a hut that was small even for a family of servants, Ikal was having trouble falling asleep.”
I like this transition. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s just not as awful as the rest of the chapter.
Worst sentence I wrote on days six and seven:
“That would be three times three times three times three. What number would that be? Many, he was sure.”
How stupid can a kid be? Genuine question.
Word count for day six: 996
Word count for day seven: 723
Total word count: 11734
