The Words: 10,516 written today. This was the most epic day of writing I have ever had, and probably ever will have. After the last two days of lower numbers, after midnight last night, I was determined to do a lot more writing. Unfortunately, everyone from my regional Skype group had gone to bed already, so there would be no word wars to spur me on. Then I remembered a Twitter account that I had discovered during a Camp NaNo earlier this year, but didn’t have use for at the time (because I rebelled and revised both Camp sessions this year). It’s twitter.com/NaNoWordSprints, if anyone’s curious. There, from 1:00 until 3:15 am, someone was keeping word sprints going. The first one I joined was a 30 minute sprint, which I was 5 minutes late for. I did it anyway. After that, through 10, 15, 20, and 30 minute sprints for a total of 2 1/4 hours, I just kept writing, with only a few minutes down time in between (and one slightly longer break when I just needed one). I went to bed with 5k words written for the day.

Then today, my husband had some friends over for a game night. During that time, I had less of my normal distractions (chores to do, my computer to stare at aimlessly, etc) because, hey, we had company. Even though I didn’t play many of the games, I still sat at the table and watched, just to be involved. But I had my laptop in front of me, and continued to do word sprints/wars, either with people from my region, or with the aforementioned Twitter feed. And the numbers just kept stacking up. There were still distractions, as it wasn’t meant to be dedicated writing time, so I had to help with our daughter, or sometimes just stopped because fun things were going on. Or there’s the 20-minute sprint where I had to stop halfway through and go find food to put in my stomach because I was getting a migraine and suddenly felt woozy.

Around 11 pm tonight, I realized I was 300 words away from 10k, so one more word war on my region’s Skype chat pushed me over. And now I am on the final page of my outline, which means the story is almost done. It may just end before the month ends.

The Story: So much happened today, though I’m sure that’s not surprising for 10,000 words. Lex and Leahna have found themselves a shared quest–to stop Rusalki. That won’t be easy, though, as they don’t actually know where to find her. They have a general region, but it will be a long, difficult search. And I have to figure out how to make sure that long, difficult search isn’t boring, without just saying, “They searched for so much time, and then found what they were looking for.” Unless I can make that work…

Total word count: 67,438

The Words: 2452 written today. Now I can admit that reaching 50k already has made me lazy. I did have a somewhat full day today, but when evening came, I didn’t go directly to writing. So I used up more of my lead. I do plan to stay up late tonight and get extra words for Saturday though.

Now, before I go on to the story part of my post, I have some other things to say. I’ve noticed how completely self-centered my blog is compared to others. This is on purpose, as I created it solely as an attempt to stay accountable in my revision work. Still, I’ve read other people’s posts about NaNoWriMo, and they’re filled with tips about how to survive the month, how to keep a plot moving, or other such things, or even encouragement. I didn’t actually anticipate people reading these posts, but I’ve had many more hits during this month than normal, I assume because I’m using the NaNoWriMo tag on my posts. That’s cool. You’re certainly welcome to read, or else why would I be writing it? I just want to say that if I’m not full of writerly advice and encouragement, please don’t hold that against me. I don’t really have the readership to be addressing an audience (other than right here where I am doing that), and after NaNoWriMo, this blog will likely slink back into obscurity.

The Story: Lex just got another big piece to the puzzle, in the form of a letter from a dead man (written before he died; no ghosts or such here). He has suddenly begun to question everything he knew about the very people who make the rules, who he trusts to teach him his own abilities. And now he knows there is some unknown group of people out there who seem to be keeping secrets from the world’s population, people who are willing to kill to keep those secrets. Unfortunately, that means that Lex is worried for anyone he has involved in his quest, especially the man to whom the letter was addressed, who is now missing. To make matters worse, Lex managed to completely alienate Leahna in yesterday’s writing, because he has been keeping secrets of his own.

Total word count: 56,922

The Words: 3545 written today. I am 1608 words away from reaching 50,000 words. It’s weird to think that last year, when I got this close to the finish line, I wrote like my life depended on it to get the last 2500 words by midnight, with 45 minutes to go. I have less than 2000 left, and had an hour before midnight when I got to that point, but I just don’t care as much. Maybe the difference is that last year, doing this well was brand new. Or maybe it’s because I was much more into my story last year than I have been this year (or any other year I’ve done NaNo). Either way, this year, it doesn’t bother me to go another day, rather than pushing it (plus, I’ll still hit 50k two days sooner than I did last year).

The Story: Lex and Leahna have now started on a search through a dangerous area. Lex is still hiding something from Leahna–something that makes the search less dangerous. During the several-month-long search, I got a chance to switch the focus to Leahna for a bit. I followed her home, talked about how hectic her life has become (a fact that she is hiding from Lex, so he won’t feel bad), and let her get her mail for the first time in a week. That’s when she discovered some terrible news about her friend, which then gave me a chance to talk about Missy a bit. (Missy is the main character from the novel I started last year during NaNo, finished a few months later, and am now revising.) That was the second place where this story connected with the other one. This time, though, instead of trying to remember how it happened, so I could show the scene from Leahna’s perspective, I just skipped the whole thing and figured that I could sort it out later.

Total word count: 48392

The Words: 5045 written today. Before I went to bed last night, I had already written 4 words shy of the minimum daily word count for today (so 1663). Since it’s Saturday, I had expected to do some more writing this afternoon, but I never got to it. Then when I started writing in the evening, I didn’t think I’d get very far. I mentioned on my Skype group of local NaNo’s that, though today the people who run the event challenged everyone to double their daily average, I was sitting at half of my average 5000, and wasn’t sure I was going to get much further. Someone else immediately suggested we do some word wars, so we did 3 over the course of the next hour and fifteen minutes.

The Story: The story is really moving along now. My biggest concern is that Leahna is barely in it. I knew that might be an issue, but I’m not sure how to solve it, or if I even can. She may just have to be less of a main character than I had originally planned. Today, Lex learned a little more about how the world works, had his future plans turned upside-down, and found a huge piece to the puzzle of his dad’s death. It didn’t answer any questions–in fact, it raised a lot–but the discovery itself was huge. HUGE.

Total word count: 37666