Day 17: NaNoWriMo 2023

Word Count at the beginning of 11/17/2023 = 66,515
Words written on 11/16 = 6847

The coast writing retreat has been exactly what I needed it to be. A place to sleep until I wake up. With minimal writing interruptions. There is no wifi here, which is obviously not keeping me from updating word counts, going online for brief periods, and so on. But because I'm relying on cellular data, the connection seems less than ideal and it uses a lot of data to go online.

Today we also took a little writing break to interpret a wonderful webinar. It's for an arts organization which is phenomenal and which is doing great work to provide arts education where it is needed most and to give hope to our collective future. Luckily, the data held. We had both of our devices synced to the computer, so that if one went out, the laptop would automatically connect to the other and there would be minimal interruption to our interpretation. Luckily that wasn't needed - but we were prepared.

The rest of the day so far has been spent on writing. And talking about writing. And relaxing and sometimes, just staring at the ocean.

Staring at the ocean and drinking coffee (in the morning) or green tea (in the evening) is a part of my writing practice. Something I need to make more time to do.

I'm happy to say that I'm making a plan with another writer to become writing buddies - again. We did this in the long ago, when we both lived in the same town. Now we are states away, but still connected through online classes and workshops and other electronic methods. We are currently looking at how we can meet virtually for coffee, conversation, writing. And looking to exchange manuscripts and work together in that way, as well. I am excited about this possibility. Accountability and community even from afar. This will be awesome.

"Lighting the Way" comic by Dot. 2022

Days 15 & 16: NaNoWriMo 2023

 Current word count, at 4:00 AM on November 16th, is 64,188.

My writing buddy and I came over to the coast after we finished work at 8pm on Tuesday 11/14. We had to pick up her things and pack them into the car. But quickly, because we wanted to stock up on food for the rest of the week from Trader Joe's; which closed at 9pm. 

We made it.

We got some iced tea and ate in the car as we made the nearly three hours drive. 

The nice thing about driving so late at night is that there is significantly less traffic. Less traffic means the drive is less stressful. Generally I am not stressed on longer drives - I actually like it, and I can find it soothing, when not dealing with aggressive drivers.

It was lovely to wake up to the ocean today. The misty sky, looking out over the waves until I couldn't see them any longer in what I thought was an incoming storm.

The wind shifted and pushes the clouds, the fog south. Maybe that was where it was heading all along.

I did a lot of writing today, around a scheduling mixup with a couple of interpreters I'd placed on a show, added a matinee. The situation that created when I had to find a new interpreting team for the interpreted matinee fell into my "no work unless it's urgent" category. Working with the somewhat intermittent internet (no wifi at the place we're staying - yay!), I was able to get a second team for that second performance, connect everyone to each other, notify the theater. And now, hopefully, there is nothing else "urgent" which comes up related to work.

I want to focus these next few days on writing. 

I am long past the 50k in 30days writing goal. But I am still writing. I am still playing the quests in 4TheWords. And editing. Still working on the edits - which are going very slow. I have to step those up, for sure. Somehow, I will. I am hoping to shift the bulk of my writing time to the edits, to get it done.

This is the graph from the NaNoWriMo website, showing the trajectory of my writing this month. The angled dotted line is the 50k in 30days target; my actual writing word count is highlighted in yellow. Looks good!

Day 14: NaNoWriMo 2023

Start of day word count = 54,313
Total words written Day 12 = 4,352

I do believe this is the earliest I have ever met the 50k word count in NaNovember! I did it! 

November 13, 2023 I surpassed the target of writing 50,000 words in a month. My writing for November is far from over - but that benchmark was met. 

Maybe I will go for a double-NaNo this year. I am going to be shifting to more editing words than generating new words. I do have a final project coming up due very soon, and I chose to complete this draft's edits as my "senior" project. 

And I will continue writing, but probably a little bit slower pace.

Tomorrow after work I will be heading to the coast for a few days for my annual November writing retreat. I think that the beach will be the perfect place to sink into book revision.

For now: congratulations to me! And here's a toast of kombucha to the next leg of this writing journey.

NaNoWriMo is Happening!

This has been a up and down NaNoWriMo so far. But I have written every day - which is awesome! I have been a little behind and growing more and more behind every day. I wasn't upset because I knew I had this writing retreat coming up, which is where I am right now.

The plan was to be over here early afternoon yesterday. But my mouth had other plans, which included an emergency trip to my dentist, where I was told that I had a dead or dying root and that's where the pain was coming from. And that I needed to see a specialist and probably needed a root canal. (It was pretty bad. If you know me in real life, you know that I tend to have a higher pain tolerance; I've been told that's because I'm a redhead.) I told them that I was supposed to be going out of town that day and was going to be gone for almost a week. They were very kind and helpful and found someone who could get me in yesterday afternoon. There is more to the story - but enough for here is that I had the appointment, she confirmed the need for a root canal, a bunch of the work is done but I need to go back to get it finished up, which can be done after the retreat is done.

So we headed out about seven hours after we planned, but we arrived. We are tucked into this lovely quaint Oregon coast cabin until next Thursday. We went to New Seasons and Trader Joe's and we have food (and alcohol and other fun things) and we don't plan to leave until we head home on Thursday and back to work. Except we might, weather depending, go down to the beach. (We are in a place where the cabin is up on a hillside, so "go down to the beach" includes actually going down the hill.)

Today I wrote a lot and made good progress on both my NaNoWriMo novel and on an assignment in the online workshop I am participating in. Good work all around! I am not done writing for the day. This day will be done before I am done writing. Which is "all good" as the saying goes.

Below is my current word count graphs, and you can see the ups and downs, now moving closer to on target. My estimate is that I will be at goal tomorrow and then keep going. I can' really predict how far I will get on this trip. But with very little to do except writing, hopefully it will be a lot of words on the page.