Writing Woes: An update on NaNoWriMo 2010

I have to say that Nanowrimo is kicking my butt this year although I'm a bit ahead of where I was last go 'round.  As of this writing, I have finally reached the halfway mark of 25,000 words.  Woot!  But I'm still struggling with it.  I should have hit that mark Monday night and instead I hit it Thursday at lunchtime.  I have to hit 37,500 this upcoming Monday night if I want to stay on track.

As one of the pep talk emails said, "I've been Week Two'd."

It's traditional to start the month roaring and to finish the month mewing like a lamb.  Week Two is typically where a alot of writers stumble.  The pizazz they started with has fizzled and they're starting to really question the soundness of the decision they made.  I started the month scrambling for an idea that I felt I could commit myself to and yet, the idea I came up with just didn't resonate after five days.  I know, I probably should have stuck with it, but I had such an aversion to it that there was no way words were going to fly out of my finges.  So I scrapped it.

By this point, of course, two of my writing buddies were way ahead of me.  Crap, I thought.  [cue dramatic moan] What am I gonna write about?!  I started digging through the scrap pile of my hard drive.  There is a folder on my desktop entitled "Kelly's Writing" - any idea I have, any manuscript I'm working on, journal entries I've written, they all end up in that little blue folder that stares at me every day.  The scrap pile revealed to me that I had a story idea I'd ben entertaining in the back of my brain for almost three years.  I totally lucked out because I even had close to 5000 words already written of it!  Technically, it's cheating, yes, but I'd already written 5000 words of the other story, so it's all a wash at the end of the day.  I put in the effort, dammit, and twice at that!

So this buried treasure is what I've been working on but I keep finding myself getting distracted.  I've had to go so far as to turn of my web browser, because otherwise, I'll be tempted to lurk through Facebook, or blog troll, or look up other random useless trivia to lock away into the recesses of my brain.  Yeah, that's my life.  Great, isn't it?

I was really proud of myself for banging out almost 5000 words this morning and I hope to repeat it tomorrow so that I can get a little bit closer to 37500 by Monday.  It won't be easy, but I know that I am more inclined to met deadlines hen they're hanging over my head.  Nothing like the proverbial feeling of "do it or die!" to get ya going in the morning!

And this time, I am determined to actually take time and edit the story once it's written.  It may still be crap after I've hacked it apart a few times, but if I'm ever going to be a published writer (notice I didn't say REAL writer...that's a sound off waiting to happen, mark my words!), I need to get to a point where I can actually feel confident about my work to send it to an agent.

So here's to 50k and beyond...12 more days to hammer out 24,858 words!

Cheers,
Kelly