I won! I won!

Hooray!

I am finished at 50,405 words. I had to write those extra few hundred because of how many em dashes I used. It felt like cheating to alter them when I'm already getting undeserved credit for my ellipses and chapter dividers.

But yeah! I won!

Is my novel finished? No. Is it ever going to be? I don't know about that. One thing I completely didn't think about when I came up with the idea was how much of it is told from a young guy's perspective. Well, I kind of suck at writing from a guy's perspective, so I'm not feeling too motivated to finish at this point.

Still, I'm so glad to have written something! And I plan to reward myself tonight with vapid videogame playing and old episodes of Loveline, and this weekend with shopping and Guitar Hero III.

I'm going to post more thoughts about the NaNo experience in the next few days. For now, I'm just excited as hell!

49,528

OMG! Almost there!

48,401

It's the final countdown! (Arrested Development reference totally intentional there!)

47,338

:-D

46,523

That's 93% done! I'm hoping for another writing session in the afternoon, or maybe I'll stay up late tonight and finish!

45,372

Less than 5,000 to go!

44,289

Maybe I can just relax tonight and think about what scenes I want to write tomorrow!

43,125

I'll be pushing on tonight while my SO does work.

42,557!

I can't believe I wrote this much today. More than 5,000 words! Off to rest my aching fingers! And maybe plan to work a bit harder at my actual job tomorrow . . .

39,067!

There's nothing like a good, thinly veiled autobiographical rant to speed things up!

37,369

Yikes! Time to really push toward the end!

Past 35,000...

...but just barely. I didn't write at all on Wednesday or Thursday, and I didn't write enough yesterday. I'm going to stop the progress reports for now because I get freaked out when I think about maintaining the necessary pace for the next few days (necessary if I want to finish, I mean). Instead, I'm going to shift away from that and just try to write as much as I can. Otherwise I think I will get too panicky and not be able to finish.

But maybe without the more detailed records, I'll be tempted to slack off even more. Hmm, I don't know. I'm going to try it this way for now, and we'll see how it goes. Who knows, maybe I'll end up switching back.

Ahhh let's hope I can finish!

Progress report #17

Word count for today: 1,727

Time: 45 minutes

Excerpt: too tired

Total word count: 32,412

Comments: too tired

time to sleep

Progress report #16

Note: Although I did write yesterday, I didn't have time to update this blog and the NaNo site after I finished. So I'm backdating this entry!

Word count for today: 2,012

Time: 75 minutes

Excerpt:

“Hi,” Ambrose said.

“I’m sorry for not showing up last night,” Audrey said.

“OK,” Ambrose said, not quite accepting her apology.

“I just don’t think we can keep doing this,” Audrey said.

“Why?” Ambrose said. “What happened?” He really hoped she was going to say something about getting caught. That could be reasoned out and solved—it didn’t meant the end of anything.

“Nothing happened,” Audrey said. “I just don’t want to see you anymore.”

Total word count: 30,685

Comments: Well, I took yet another Sunday off. Luckily though, it doesn't seem to have hurt me too much. Things are still going well, although work has continued to be busy, so I've had to stop writing in the mornings and at lunch because otherwise my wrists, fingers, and brain are all exhausted by 4 p.m. So I write in the afternoons and evenings instead, and that's working out well.

Progress report #15

Word count for today: 2,178

Time: 60 minutes

Excerpt:

“Zach,” Lily said then, getting a little more serious, “I don’t know what your schedule here is like. But I was wondering—you know that café down the road?”

“Oh yeah. The only one in town?”

Lily grinned. “Yeah. Well . . . do you want to have dinner there sometime? Maybe this weekend?”

Zach had to stop his mouth from dropping open. Was she asking him out on a date? Zach looked at her and saw that she looked a little nervous, and a little shy too. Yes, she was. Zach had dated a couple of girls in the past, but he certainly had never been asked out by a girl. He had also never dated a girl of a different religion, he reminded himself, and wondered whether going out with her might be a bad idea. But the thing was, Zach really liked her. He liked listening to her play music, and he liked talking to her and listening to her opinions. They were different from his in an exhilarating way, rather than a threatening one (as he had always been taught different opinions were). So Zach smiled back at Lily and said, “Yeah. When do you want to go?”

Lily was clearly happy he’d said yes. Her face flushed a little, and she smiled widely. “How about tomorrow night at seven?” she said.

“OK,” said Zach.

“OK,” said Lily.

Total word count: 28,673

Comments: Wow! Writing went great today! I always get a little burst of momentum when I'm writing a romantic scene I really like. In this scene, two characters who are different are kind of sharing their viewpoints (and, at some points, arguing about them) with one another, and that results in this growing attraction between them. Well, I just breezed right through this scene -- and the past couple days, I've really had to push to get through my requisite 1,700 words or so. So I feel really good right now. It really is important to just push yourself and make yourself produce sometimes. Yeah!