The Words:  3486 written today. I wrote about 1800 words after midnight last night, then wrote the rest this evening. Twenty minute sprints again throughout my writing time. This month so far, I’ve been averaging about 650-700 words per sprint. Last year, I apparently averaged 500. The last sprint, which I started at 11:30 pm, ended up being 1000 words right at the end. I have no idea why. It didn’t feel like I was doing any better than usual. I’ll take it though. I’ll do another sprint or two before I go to bed to start into Monday’s daily goal, because I’ve noticed that it helps to have a dent already made in the daily word count before I get to writing for the evening, after the kids go to bed. It’s purely a mental trick, but it does help.

The Story:  The character who came out of nowhere yesterday has settled in pretty nicely. He’s just a friend for my main character to have. Otherwise, Alexander would have been pretty lonely and even more detached from the rest of society than he already is. I’ve gotten through exactly one page of my eleven-page (printed) outline, and so far, I’m pretty sure the story hasn’t even really started. On the other hand, this is all kind of important to his character. I’ll wait to see how long the whole story ends up before I decide this is too much lead-up to the real story. The second main character will be entering soon, and then things will really pick up. Well, there will be about a year during which not much happens (according to my fancy timeline), but it will pass quickly in the story. Anyway…that’s another day’s work.

Total word count: 9442

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