Four Days, One Weekend, 14,298 Words

I feel like I'm doing NaNoWriMo on speed this year. Seriously, I do not know what has come over me. Okay, that's a lie. I'm pretty sure what's come over me is the realization that if I can complete my novel by the 16th instead of just getting myself to 42,112 words, I'll enjoy my vacation way more than I will if I don't. (Sorry about that. NaNo makes me even more wordy than usual.) It could be that, or it could be my muse rewarding me for being brave enough to embark on a 50,000-word novel without the foggiest idea of where it's going or even which character is actually my protagonist. Whatever the reason is, it's working. So far. It could be that I'm actually doing an accelerated NaNoWriMo this year, which could very well mean that this is not only the end of my first weekend, but the end of my first week. I guess I'll find out if/when I hit the dreaded wall in the next few days.

But I don't want to dwell on that. I'd rather focus on the positive tonight. To start with, there are the words. I don't know where they came from, possibly from the dumpster out back if their quality is any indication, but they're here and there are lots of them. In fact, there are more words currently living in my fledgling novel than there are in most of the towns I grew up in. And I owe it all to a mistake on Day 1. Curious? Too bad. I'm going to tell you the story anyway.


Hallowe'en came and went, and I managed to lure only one trick-or-treater to my basement suite den of really, really good Nestle chocolate. I'm the good candy lady! I dress up and everything! What's wrong with kids these days??

*ahem*

As the night wore on, I tried to distract myself. I went to the NaNoWriMo Forum, but it was very slow and not a good distraction at all. I played some computer solitaire, but I soon realized that while the game is very good for procrastinating, it doesn't help much when there is nothing else to do. Eventually, I resorted to the unthinkable. I began to clean my office. Months of old newspapers and bills were thrown or filed away. The computer got dusted. The area around the computer was cleared of all but the most necessary distractions. Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the clock. It said 11:23, and it was good. I went to the kitchen and filled the sink with hot soapy water and a lot of dirty dishes, then proceeded to magically transform them into a lot of clean dishes. In the meantime I boiled water for tea.

At 11:54, I carried my pot of green tea, and a mug, and my tiny cast of almost-characters into the office, and sat down in front of the computer. And I waited. And poured some tea. And waited some more. And posted in the Forum. And waited. And then, finally, the clock struck midnight and I opened a new Word document, named it NaNo07, set the text to white and began to type. I typed, and typed, and only stopped when I could hardly keep my eyes open anymore. (In retrospect, I probably could have kept typing since I couldn't see the words anyway.) It was 1:30 in the morning, and I had typed 2,721 words. I couldn't believe it! Last year it took me three hours or more every night to squeeze out 2,000, and this year I'd written more than that in my first hour-and-a-half. I was inspired. I went to bed.

Morning. Shower. Work. Home. Dinner. Tea. Back to the computer. I have a plan, 2,632 words a day, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it fall apart on my second day of writing. So I wrote for half an hour, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a little voice said, "It's still November 1, you idiot! You did your word count plus some hours ago!" Which would have been reason enough for me to stop last year, but I had nearly 4,000 words so I figured I'd push on. And then I had 4,000 words and decided that since 5,264 was my Day 2 goal, I might as well write a little longer and get a day ahead. And then, when I was almost at 5,000 words, one of my characters finally started talking and before I knew it my word count was 5,669. And that's when I finally stopped.

The End

(Just in case you're wondering, the above story is not indicative of the level of storytelling in my NaNo. My NaNo is much, much worse.)

On Day 2 (the real one) I exceeded my daily minimum by 81 words, bringing my total wordcount to 8,382. On Day 3 I wrote 99 words more than my minimum, and my total became 11,113. And tonight I had another Day 1 experience. I typed for an hour and managed nearly 2,000 words, but didn't hit my minimum. I'm now a day-and-a-half ahead, but that's no reason to slack off; I need that cushion for when I really can't write one day. So I took a little break, then came back and wrote for another hour, bringing my total word count to 14,298. I was tempted for a while to push on to 15,000 but knew that if I did that I'd have to do at least 15,792 so that I could be two days ahead instead of just one. And that's just silly.

So there are the words. There is also the story. Ah, the story. That strange little pet project of my muse. It's very important to her. So important in fact that she's only letting me see it a little at a time. But I've seen enough now to know that, if nothing else, at least it fits. I may not have a novel when I'm done with it - it might be something more like a short story, or a 3D-puzzle model of Big Ben - but all the pieces will fit. And not because I convinced them with a small hammer. It's a small victory, but I'll take what I can get.

And then there's the final thing, and this is the most surprising. I've got time left over. I've worked every day since NaNo started, and have written more than my wordcount on each of those days, and yet somehow have found time to sleep, eat, do the dishes, and even squeeze in some cuddle time with The Boy (which is a very effective technique for combating Troll in the Basement Syndrome, a common malady during NaNoWriMo).

I don't know how all this has happened, but all I can say is 'so far, so good'. And 'I hope I haven't just jinxed it.'