The Words: 2613 total words. I was feeling better all around today, so here’s hoping that ‘s the end of the sickness and other problems from this week. I wrote two 10-minute sprints with my 11-year-old daughter, who woke up early today to get some extra writing in too, since she’s let herself get behind. Then this evening, I caught a 20-minute sprint with the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter to get the rest of the words for the day.

The Story: Today’s writing involved a lot of reminiscing about past stories, as two characters tried to make sense of something that’s going on. They won’t get to make sense of it in this book, but it is a bridge between the previous ones and the next one.

Total word count: 23,090

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 11, 2011!

The Words: 2217 total words, which I’m pretty happy about after yesterday. The sinus headache at the back of my head came back part way through the day, not to mention general tiredness brought on by sickness, but after a few hours of relaxing in bed, I made myself go downstairs to write instead of using my Neo in bed. I figured I’d let myself be lazy again if I stayed in bed. I sprinted for 10 minutes while waiting for a longer sprint on the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter to be over, and then joined them for a 30-minute sprint, which got me 1699 words. I called it a night after that.

The Story: A particularly volatile character was visited in prison, and I’m not sure I wrote her very well. She’s going to be the most difficult character to get right in this story, as well as the one before it where she has the most “screen time.”

Total word count: 20,477

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 10, 2011!

The Words: 224 total words just to be able to keep my writing streak. Every year I have at least one day like this—banging out some words just to be able to say I wrote. Today it was due to 3 (most likely) unrelated sources of pain working together it impossible to concentrate for very long. One of those is a sinus infection causing a near-constant headache in the back of my head. Hopefully it won’t last long, because it wipes me out and at times stops me in my tracks.

The Story: I continued the scene I started yesterday…uhh…there was some discussion about why one of the characters should be kept out of something that might make her more overwhelmed than she already is. It was 224 words, so not a lot happened.

Total word count: 18,260

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 9, 2011!

The Words: 1280 total words for the day, though the lower word count today wasn’t intentional. I just didn’t get home until around 11 pm, so I did a couple of 10-minute sprints just to get some words in.

The Story: I shifted gears a little today. Yesterday, I took some time to brainstorm some other ideas of things to add into the story to fill it out some. Most of it was actually necessary in the story anyway, because otherwise the previous book, chronologically speaking, would have some plot points just left dangling. Though the continuation of those things weren’t crucial to the main plot of this book, I think I can tie them into a decent sub-plot. So I started writing that today, because the first of these events should have happened already in the story, before the spot I’d gotten to as of yesterday.

Total word count: 18,036

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 8, 2011!

The Words: 1029 total words for the day, a purposely lower word count. This was partly because I was tired and just wanted to be done a little earlier, and partly because I want to try to keep from finishing the story before the end of the month. I did brainstorm some other scenes, which I think I can possibly tie together into something of a subplot, but I don’t know that they’ll add enough for me to go back to 2500 words per day.

The Story: Stuff really hit the fan today, and that 1000 words took me right up to the beginning of a loud, attention-grabbing confrontation that will set the scene for a major plot point to follow. I’m actually not sure how well the confrontation will come out, whether or not I can keep it from just sounding comical, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.

Total word count: 16,756

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 7, 2011!

The Words: 2793 total words for the day, which were a roller coaster in regards to how good I felt about what I was writing as I went. At times it was flowing well and I liked what was coming out, but a few times, nothing seemed to be working right.

I took a good look at how much of my outline I’ve gotten through so far, versus how much is left, and I think this story is going to be one of the shortest first drafts in the series. I may try to do some brainstorming over the next few days to see if I can come up with a side plot to include or some other way to fill out the story (with something of substance, not useless filler). It’s worked before. But in the meantime, I’m lowering my daily goal to 2000 words per day (from 2500).

The Story: I wasn’t sure how to include scenes from the antagonist’s point of view without giving away who it was, so I started out by just writing those scenes in 1st person and never using that person’s name. I figured if it didn’t work, I could change it later. I did 3 scenes like that in today’s writing, and I’m kind of liking it. I can’t guarantee I won’t still change it some day after all, but I’ll keep going this way this month at least.

Total word count: 12,930

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 5, 2011!

The Words: 2600 words total for the day, and I broke 10k words!

I have a good feeling that most of my writing this month will be similar to what it’s been so far, doing most of my writing in sprints alongside my daughter at whatever time of the day we can fit it in together, then maybe doing some more by myself in the evening to get the rest of my words. She insisted I check the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter several times, as she likes doing sprints with them too, but again today, they were between sprint leaders the entire time we were writing.

The Story: Things finally started flowing a little better today, though I did have a couple of moments where I veered off course due to trying to pump out words during a sprint, only to realize that what I was writing wouldn’t work for later parts of the story. Normally I don’t mind going off-outline, but there are some specific things that have to happen the right way for this story to work, and none of the ways I was getting off track were particularly ground-breaking, so they weren’t worth pursuing.

Total word count: 10,137

If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 4, 2011!