Sunday, November 25, 2007

NaNo Blogging: Accepting the Inevitable

Sigh, it looks like I'm not going to finish after all. According to my outline, I'm under halfway through the story. I have it divided up into chapters and in-between into different settings - I expect those to be of various lengths but I can't say for certain just how long each would be. Call it two fifths of the way done. I'd really hoped to be at two thirds by now. But, at this point, I'm sick, I'm operating on about four hours sleep and I have no idea how I can keep this up for the next...I'm not even sure how many days are left in the month. Worse, my inner editor has returned from the grave and is desperately trying to convince me that what I'm writing now is awful - the end product of cold syrup and sleep deprivation that should have been stillborn children of the mind instead of a desperate last ditch attempt to reach my goal. I'm going to head back in (After a quick and blessedly welcome nap) and see what more I can get done. And, either way, I'm committed to working to the bitter end. It's just a matter of how hard I'm going to wear myself out at this point. Next week was supposed to be a busy one for me although, at the moment, all I feel like doing is crawling under the covers and forgetting the rest of the world exists.

Pretty much a fitting end for a really lousy month when you get right down to it. This whole November's been pretty starcrossed from the get go. Just, yeah, I'll be glad to see the back of it.

Still, I can't feel too bad. I took a brief glance at my word count today and I actually have more than I thought. There's a lot of notes and clutter inflating things that I'd like to get rid of before feeding it into the magic counting machine but, well, if you add in the work on my first novel and the first draft of this current one and that third novel of filthy smut I've been working up on the side, well, I think my total is pretty impressive (Plus, you know, more than a hundred blog posts, countless e-mails, work, other projects, and all, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being lazy this month.). The goal, of course, is to get to a finished product, for once. And I think I'm going to fail that one. But, as always with NaNo, it's more about the journey to get there than it is about reaching the finish line. This November might have been doomed from the start but that just means I have a reason to show up with my A-game next year.

And besides, there are still a few days left. I'm not quitting, I'm just admitting that the possibility of success is slim. I could still pull off the unexpected. And I'm certainly going to try.

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