NaNoWriMo: Crossing the Halfway Point

So here I am, more than halfway through the month and -- miracle of miracles -- also more than halfway to 50,000 words. There is a chance I might just do this. I've told my friends and family about it, I've even put celebrating the end right up there with celebrating my birthday (actually, it's the same party).

Week Two was hard. I mean it, it was a serious challenge. Just shy of 20,000 words I hit a point where I realized my characters were just rough conglomerations of different traits. They needed to become real, live people in the story. I needed to learn more about them. So I forced myself to keep writing, 1,000 words at a time, to figure out what made these folks tick.

I think I'm getting it. Crossing the 25K mark was a huge milestone not just in terms of being more than halfway there, but in terms of being able to sit down and write and see 1,000 words go down on the page with hardly any trouble at all.

I also took a little vacation from my story: saw friends, played games, etc. On Saturday I realized I'd sort of abandoned my real life. Not good. So we'll see how living in two worlds works out for me. On Monday when I was getting ready for work I actually noticed dark circles under my eyes, a clear sign of age or sleeplessness or both. Consistently skimping on sleep just isn't as easy as it used to be. I can remember staying up until all hours working on school projects or spending time with friends. Now that tired feeling during the day just doesn't seem worth it. Either that or I end up falling asleep on the floor at 11:00 on a Friday night. Not my proudest moment, but it's all leading up to one of my proudest moments for sure: crossing the NaNoWriMo finish line.

While I may not be able to stay awake past 11:00 on a Friday night, I do possess a certain "failure is not an option," do-or-die streak that keeps me going on projects like this. Sleepiness or no, server upgrades and fundraising season at the office or no, this novel's going to get written. It'll get written in the car on the way to/from Thanksgiving in PA (yes, I have a power inverter to plug into the cigarette lighter). It'll get it written at 8:00 on a Saturday morning after I've only just been roused from my friends' floor at 2:00 a.m.

It'll get written in the time before work that I used to reserve for showering and making my hair look presentable (i.e. not slept on). Don't ask about that one. Really.

At any rate, I'm still plugging away at this thing and I'm still on track to succeed, if only just barely. So here's to the rest of November!