NaNoWriMo Update

I like to write on paper with a nice pen. I like the way that feels, and it enables me to take notes, cross things out, make doodles in the margins as I write. So, for this year's NaNoWriMo attempt I did just that. I bought a notebook and wrote. I find I write best in the morning so I tried to do most of my writing at that time before I went to work and then finish off some more words at the end, but when I reached over 20,000 words, the realization of it all hit me like a mack truck. In order to have my word count validated and to officially "win," I would have to type it all in and upload it to the NaNoWriMo site by November 30. *headdesk*

I've since switched gears. I've started typing in the mornings what I've written so far, and I type new scenes into my laptop at night. Physically typing at night isn't foreign to me since that's when I'd usually check my email and respond to people online. I'm better at staying awake when I'm typing into the computer at 11:30pm than I am when I scribbling into my (paper) notebook. At night I have a stream of consciousness thing going on that works well for typing out a nanonovel. In two days/nights, I've typed around 7,000 new words of my story. (yay!) I'm aiming for 30,000 words before I go to sleep tonight. I know there are many who are way ahead of me (congratulations!!) and many who are behing me in word count (don't give up!!), but hitting the 30,000 mark would be such a confidence boost for me.

Luckily, I had written a series of sentences lite for the story as part of my class work in Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers course. Those little scene sentences are a godsend! I can easily stay on track and create new scenes at the same time. Taking Holly's class was a wise decision for me.

Oh! and Scrivener is working out great. Once the trial period is over, I'll have to purchase the program. I've been able to keep all my notes, sentences lite and work in one spot. And Scrivener keeps a running word count for me, and shows me a little graph/bar with my progress. How cool is that? Very cool in my book.