ten percent down

by the time i finished yesterday, i'd written 5146 words for my NaNoWriMomfg (™ eric) project. i felt pretty pleased with that count. it was respectable without being exhausting, and it allowed me to finish my day with a sense of accomplishment.

i wound up writing for about six hours, off and on throughout the day and with stretches of break time, random research time and "crap, i need to think of a good surname" pondering time sprinkled at regular intervals.

when i began at 11am, the goal was 3000 words before bedtime, and i thought perhaps that might be too lofty a number. what if i got stuck? what if i realized i had nothing to say? what if i started to feel the way i felt on tuesday afternoon, when i thought my proposed story was little more than a steaming pile of poo?

what if i hit the wall after word #500?

thankfully, i hit the 3000-word mark in the early afternoon and, shockingly, looked over what i'd written and didn't think it was a steaming pile of poo. in fact, i actually really liked the character i'd just created out of thin air (literally building her from scratch as i went along), and was really enjoying her back story... which is what had eaten up those 3K words.

and i realized that i still had at least a couple thousand more words' worth of history to fill in for her... so i did. i stopped writing when i hit a natural break in the storyline (the next chapter will begin with a different character), but probably could have written another thousand words more if my ass hadn't been SO ready to leave the desk chair for the rest of the evening.

but, you know, 5146 words in a day isn't half bad.

now, i'm not fooling myself -- 5000 words a day is a LOT, and the chances of me maintaining that pace for an extended stretch of time is slim. i didn't do anything yesterday except sit at the computer or sit on the couch, so there was plenty of time to peck away at the 50K. i know there will be days in the next month -- heck, i have three in the next seven days alone! -- where i'll be lucky if i manage to write for an hour, if at all, so i'm hoping to pad that cushion (of words, not the one on my desk chair) whenever i can.

but i'm happy to report that the story is off to a solid start, with an interesting octogenarian at its core, and i'm looking forward to what happens when the crew of oddballs arrive on her doorstep.