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Well, I’m at 30,000 words, still a bit ahead but it’s going to get tougher. I knew I should never say things are going well.

I’m involved in a project at work that has a fixed deadline. And we just got told (tactfully, but not in a way you can say no) that we need to work 10 hour days or Saturdays. I was already giving up my lunch and working through it, but this is going to make it a lot harder.

So, I spent this Saturday doing errands and a bit of cooking and cleaning (only a bit) since I won’t get much of a chance during the week. I would much rather have been at the Clay Guild meeting instead. Now I just have to figure out a way to stay sane until Spring

I’m halfway to the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in a month - two days ahead of time!

Now I just need to keep that buffer. Things like grocery shopping and real life seem to eat away at it quickly. But I’m in good shape.

I really think I’m going to do it. I wasn’t sure I could when I first started this whole thing. I wanted to try - any words I had at the end of the month would be more than I had before.

As the Little Engine That Could said, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”

Twenty three thousand words, almost halfway to my goal for the month, and I don’t know what happens next. Aacck! I just have to keep telling myself that this is a rough draft. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect this time around. I can always restructure it.

And it’s allowed to suck

This weekend has really helped. I needed 16670 words to stay on track for today, and I just passed 21000. Things are going well although I think my story has taken a twist from where I expected it to go. I was going to strand my princess in a peasant village for a month or so, with or without amnesia… But that doesn’t seem to be happening.

It could all still change tomorrow, but it looks like this may be a journey story instead. It should be interesting. I still don’t have a handle on the Princess’s character but I’m hoping she’ll develop one along the way. Once I know what it is, I can always go back in the revisions and make everything consistent.

I do rather regret the piglet I was going to have in the story though… It would have been cute.

I’ve just passed 15,000 words. It took me about four years with a few days now and then to get around to writing that much on the last book… And this was just eight days.

I’m sure it will get harder but this has been helpful already. It helped me see that the key to a rough draft is just writing it. I can always make it better later. I can find the time to write whenever I have to. Half an hour before breakfast, an hour after dinner, a bit more time on the weekends… That’s enough to make real progress.

And writing fast like this, with a concrete deadline, helps squish the procrastination bug. I can’t choose to do the dishes, or water the plants just because I can’t face the fear of my story not being as good as I want it to. I don’t have time. That does mean that the sink is filling up. (I’ve already killed most of the plants so you don’t have to feel too sorry for them.)

But it also means the story is carrying me along. I’m not overthinking it. I’m just writing. I did sit down ahead of time and figure out a rough idea of how the story might go and what the scenes might be. And I think I’m mostly following it. But I haven’t looked at that list of events and there have been some surprises already.

There are some decisions that I haven’t made yet about the story… But rather than stop writing until I make up my mind, I’m just going to keep writing and let my character decide how it goes when she dries out and wakes up.

I can always change my mind in the revisions.

10494 words and a reprieve! I don’t have to go in for jury duty on Monday after all. I’m still in the jury pool and they can call me whenever they want, but at least I’ll have Monday free

I’m a fifth of the way there and on schedule. It’s both easier and harder than I thought. It really only takes a couple hours per day but when you’re tired, it’s harder to sit down and start writing.

But I’m enjoying it too. My evil princess just gave the perfect princess’s maid the fantasy equivalent of poison ivy - narrowing the group down even further. Tune in next time when Forsythia gets swept away down the river and starts her own adventures

I got all my words for yesterday in the morning and took the evening off to do some grocery shopping and spend some time with my husband. (He’s such an awesome guy - he cleaned the kitchen and everything this morning.)

So, at 8631, I need to get to work for today

Well, I’m on track so far. I have 5555 words right now but most of that was left over from this weekend. We had our ballroom dancing class tonight - we both were so tired that we were tripping over our feet, never mind trying to learn the new steps… Oh well, we’ll get it eventually.

I think the universe knows I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo this month. It’s out to get me already. I got a call today saying that I have to go in Monday for jury selection. And wouldn’t you know it, that was the day I’d planned as a vacation day to help get me up on my word count?

Ces’t la vie.

Or as Dory from Finding Nemo would say, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming…” One word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, and I’ll make it.

Seems a little backward, doesn’t it? It’s supposed to be quality not quantity… But that’s the idea behind NaNoWriMo and I think it applies to Polymer Clay or any other creative activity.

Saturday is the first day of National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 50,000 words in one month. I was reading a book by the founder Chris Baty (No Plot, No Problem) which described the concept.

Basically, the idea is to have a deadline and the support of other people doing the same project and to write so much and so regularly that you get past your Inner Editor which makes you procrastinate and second guess yourself. The idea is to just write without worrying about it, to have some fun and prove that you can accomplish something. And he makes the point that it’s often not any worse than a normal first draft that you spent hours agonizing over every sentence.

I think the same thing can apply to art. I don’t remember whose blog had the anecdote but it talked about an experiment with a ceramics class. One half of the class was told they would be graded on one piece. They had all semester to make that perfect piece and they agonized over it. The other half of the class was told quality didn’t matter. They were going to be graded on how many pieces they produced. So, they started whipping out as many pieces as they could. At the end of the semester, their pieces were better even though they hadn’t put any thought into quality.

And that’s the idea behind NaNoWriMo. Quality comes about after quantity, and relaxing a bit about the importance of it all.

Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo?

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Sign up on the site, write 50,000 words in 30 days and you’re a winner.

No worrying about how good it is, no going back to edit… The idea is to write as much as you can for as long as you can, and free your mind of whimsey. *imagine the last words in the appropriate wise sensei voice*

Actually, it’s more like consign your mind to insanity. AI’m not sure if it’s more insane to voluntarily sign up for this kind of self torture, or to allow your over-tired brain to take over your fingers and your keyboard. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Either way, I’m going to try it this year. I’m really not sure if I can get to 50,000 words in one month. That’s an awful lot of words for me. But I’m going to try. However much I write, it will be more than I had before.

And it ought to be fun In a crazy, twisted sort of way…