Argh. At the start of Week 3, and mid-point of the month, I am not quite where I should or wanted to be, though truth be told, I am not horribly behind either. Right before the stroke of Midnight, I managed to crack 23K (23,182 to be precise) but only after a really hard push since the day before. Sunday and Monday were not good writing days for a variety of reasons (those Real life things that actually do take precedence over NaNo and that there’s no way to account for) with just over 1200 words between both days. I’m about 2000 words behind right now, nothing that I can’t make up either by dividing those among all the remaining days, or with a really good writing day.
At the start of Week 3 I realize I am probably rambling a little too much. Almost at the half-point of the book, I am just barely getting to the second big point in the memoir out of 6 or 7 total. I am not worried about writing too much (if anything this assures I will not run out of stuff to write before reaching 50K) but I can already tell the Editor-Me is going to have a field day with this first draft. Still, chugging along, writing, writing, writing and leaving the editing for later on. The one good thing is that I feel my memoir technique is getting a little better. It’s a different form of writing, even if it somewhat resembles fiction, and I’m learning the rules as I go along, both from practice and from a book I’m reading, Writing Your Life: Putting your Past on Paper, by Lou Willet Stanek.
Back to writing now. At least I have some new music to help me out, but that will be another post.
It doesn’t quite match my own running word count, much like the graph on the sidebar, because the NaNo system counts days by the calendar, and I count days as the time between me getting up and going to sleep. Later on I’ll post my own word count chart. Still, a great tool.
Well, we have just begun week 2 of NaNo. Week 2 is described as being tedious because you lose the steam brought by the newness of NaNo, but you aren’t so far in that quitting isn’t an option. Last year I quit in week 2, but this year I will plow on.
Today I broke 13,000 words; after a very dismal word count yesterday, I came back and wrote 2753 words during the day, putting me back on track. I can’t slack off, though.
My book has taken an interesting turn.
I knew that fiction stories took on a life of their own, characters suddenly deciding to do things other than what you intended (and if you aren’t a writer, you think that sounds ludicrous), but I though a memoir was immune to that. I was wrong, it seems. Meant to be a combination religious journey/travel memoir, it seems the religious journey has taken center stage, with the travel an addendum to explain how I changed based on those trips. I’m gonna let it continue to lead me in that direction. If I need to take out all the early part about traveling that doesn’t fit with the other theme when I go over the draft then so be it.
Broke 9000 words tonight and I am beat. The words are flowing nicely, but tonight was a difficult night to write, as I had to relive very painful moments of my life to get those images from my mind onto “paper.” Still, I’m feeling very good about the book so far.
Day 3 and so far so good; the words are flowing without much coaxing, and the act of writing feels organic, not forced. I was worried about that since I hadn’t written in quite a long time, but thank G-d, no problem there so far.
The hardest part for me is that I am writing a memoir, and shifting through the foggy mists of memory can distract you before you are even aware you are daydreaming and have lost 10-15 minutes recalling something that won’t be more than a couple of sentences on the page. The opposite of that is getting lost in the writing of a scene, recalling a particular memory and writing it out in excrutiating detail when just a couple of sentences would have sufficed. Now, of the two I prefer the second one, since it adds to the word count, even if I know I’ll have to revise and edit later on, but both are a danger one needs to keep in mind when writing a memoir.
The only problem with NaNo I (and my wife for that matter) have is that we are observant Jews that keep Shabbat, so Friday night to Saturday night NaNo is off-limits to us, thus our daily word count totals are slightly different than the standard 50K-divided-by-30. That means that when we need to be on top of our game even more, so we can make up the word count for the days we don’t have all day to write.
Now I gotta head home and prepare for Shabbat, though maybe I’ll have time to put down another 500 words before I have to go to prayers.
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