The Work:  5956 words written today. I started at midnight for the “midnight sprint,” which in my case was more like a midnight marathon. I worked until 4, but let me be clear. I only wrote for a few hours of that. I didn’t intend to take such long breaks, but that’s exactly why, outside of NaNoWriMo, I don’t get much done. I just lack the discipline. On the plus side, though, before I went to bed, I had a word count of 3507. That is a bit more than two days of work. So that was nice. Then I did a 20-minute sprint during the day. That’s how I normally write now. Twenty minutes (sometimes more or less than twenty) of non-stop, mostly distraction-free writing, then a break of some length, then do it again. I’ve found it’s the way I work best. In the evening, I did two more 20-minute sprints total, finishing the second right before midnight. Now I’m taking a break, then plan to do a bit more before bed.

The Story:  I do have a full outline to write from, but the first bit of it is rather vague. It sets up the story and the main character (named Alexander), but doesn’t really say what will happen from a story viewpoint. Just an overview of the character’s life during the first few years. So I started in and tried to make a real story out of those notes. Somehow I spawned a new character that I’d never even considered before. I’m still not sure if this new character will stay, as I have only a vague purpose for him. It’s interesting, really…I guess I thought the story was already boring without him, but with him, it just gets more complicated. That’s the nature of writing fiction, though. NaNoWriMo just compresses it.

Total word count: 5956