This NaNoWriMo is a struggle. As I've already written, the start was rocky and not my usual happy, let's kick it off at midnight with a room full of other writers. I was with a good friend, we wrote at midnight. I was also significantly short on sleep and at a work conference and a little overwhelmed before the month even began.
These are not excuses. These are facts from my life. Or I should say, they are factors in my life right now.
I still am not giving up on passing the 50k word line before the end of the month. And it is going to be a struggle. It is being a struggle. This will be my eleventh consecutive year of writing 50k+ words in the month of November and I'm not going to fail. I could decide to not do it, to stop, to let myself be okay with not completing it this year. I do know this is my decision and I can decide to say no. But I have decided to not do that.
I will continue.
And the light on the horizon has come closer and it is actually just around the corner, I believe. Today marks the end of a very long run of work, conference, work, theater, work. I do have appointments and some theatre related work in the next few days, but I also have some time available to write; more time than I've had since the beginning of the month.
Oh - and I am in the chapbook writing and printing class. Which is awesome. I am so inspired by Ariel and the other writers in the online class. We are making these amazing books, which are going to be out in the world very soon. Mine is not what I was envisioning when I signed up, but I am loving it. Loving the process. I am inspired by Ariel's instruction and guidance and feedback. I am inspired by the other writers beautiful words, sharing our projects as we work through the learning process, give each other feedback, share our ups and downs.
I will say that the chapbook class is one thing which is keeping me going, despite it being another thing I have to do.
So, there we are, I am writing. I am creating. My dystopian novel has become a series of dystopian short stories. And some of those short stories are short story beginnings. Some of them are leading nowhere and I'm letting that be okay, too. I am writing something every day, except for the one day of road trip from the conference back to home (it was a thirteen hours trek from there to here). I have only made the target word count twice this month. Which means, at this point, the NaNoWriMo word count system is telling me that I need to write 2130 words each day in order to meet the 50k before midnight on November 30th, instead of the normal average of 1667 words per day. That seems do-able. It is not an insurmountable number.
I can and will do this.
My current word count is 12902. To be on target, I should have 21666 words written by the end of the day. That is not going to happen and it's okay.