Today’s the last day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I specifically took it off to do a last blast on my novel. But it’s also my 20th day of this headache. So, I took it easy. I have found that taking a Maxalt does wipe me out the day I take it but then the headache eases up for a few days, so I took a Maxalt. I managed to get the grocery shopping done, which I had avoided on the weekend, and the laundry, which my son brought home from his weekend with his Dad.
I did finish writing up a scenario of the vision I have gained for the book. I’ve definitely gotten less stuck than I was at the start of the month. I think it could use another month (at least) of brainstorming. But for December, I want to tackle The Mystical Mantle. I think I will definitely have new energy for it.
I’m having fun with tracking my progress, though. I always was a numbers person. In the past, I never liked using word count. So much of writing is revising, and you may need to take out more words than you write, so I like to go by time instead. However, NaNoWriMo led me to see the value of using word count when you are doing a rough draft. It helps you to keep your hand moving.
Since a lot of my revising of The Mystical Mantle is going to be inserting some new material, I may use some of that for writing the new material. Anyway, I made myself a new spreadsheet like the one I was using for NaNoWriMo to track my progress, and I can use it for my blogs, too. It’s rather fun. I think I will also keep track of my time. I had already decided to evaluate whether 30 minutes a day is a doable goal for 2010. I enjoyed the goal of 15 minutes a day in 2009. Maybe now that I’m in the swing of working full-time, I can do 30 minutes a day in 2010.
Anyway, I hope to still write a review or two tonight, but as far as novel writing goes, I am calling NaNoWriMo done for me for this year. I did not meet the 50,000 word goal, but all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed participating, so for me it was a grand success.
Here are my final statistics:
Words written on my novel: 17, 294
Blogging: 15,092 words
Total words, novel plus blogging: 32,386
Reviews written: 18
Other blog entries: 32
That counts Sonderquotes, which are other people’s words, and easy to write up.
All in all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this focus on writing, and it gave me new energy. I also got all my pictures put up and the boxes in my room unpacked, so I also feel pretty much moved in to my new home — what’s left is basically putting away some last bits of clutter.
So now all I have to do is get rid of this headache.
Write on!