Second Gear

I spent yesterday with a dear friend who is also an excellent writer. We did timed writings on random topics, to get our writing muscles fired up and, afterwards, a series of twenty-minute sprints on our respective writing projects. We took one snippet of plot and wrote on that, then switched to the next snippet for the next twenty and wrote on that. Even though I felt sluggish from having a pain injection procedure and sedation the day before, I managed to hammer out another 2,000 words for NaNoWriMo. They were good words too. I’d expected more “crap” but that’s not what I ended up with, so all in all a decent day in the throes of National Novel Writing Month.

Exceeding your days’ word count makes you feel pretty great. Problem is I’m behind. I understood when I signed onto NaNoWriMo that I might not make the 50k mark by the end of the month, but I was willing to commit to the effort. Still, making 50k was less important to me than jamming my current NIP into second gear. So while I’d like to be much further off the line in much less time, I’m pretty happy that I’ve gotten past several story obstacles and found some new ways forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up yet on adding to my Nano word count. I’m just satisfied that I’ve made meaningful progress on my story, which is what my writing’s about anyway – putting one sentence in front of the other and heading down the fiction highway toward the finish line.

How are you all doing on your Nano word counts? What are you getting out of the process? How would you compare your writing during Nano to the writing you normally produce?

©2008 Interminable Writer