Booyah!

I am done. Cue the chorus, strike up the band, and uncork the champaign.

Today, at approximately 10:40 pm EST, I passed 50,000 words in the annual NaNoWriMo challenge. Although I have not posted an excerpt, you can view my word count total here.

I think I will take tomorrow off. For the rest of the month, I can be content to poke my head into my fuzzy little crappy novel, and add a couple hundred words per day. It's not done, not yet, because there are several scenes of "Now X happens to Y, so that Z can occur" and I need to flesh those out. And I think there are a few random subplot threads that I need to tie up or snip. All this can be done in editing. But as of today, 19 November, 2005, I can call myself an unpublished novellist.

Day fourteen update

I'm still doing NaNoWriMo and here it is, Day 14 already. By the slow-and-steady pacing theory, by the end of today, I should have 23,338 words written. I currently have 33,923 written, and might break 35k tonight.

It's kind of like a treadmill. I could, I suppose, get off for a couple of days, but then I would have to work to regain any momentum I now possess, whereas if I can keep plugging away for just another few days, I should be able to cross that 50k finish line well ahead of the deadline.

What the heck (part I)

I'm not sure how long this link will work, but it should be good for a couple of weeks. I'll summarize, however:

Luann is a daily comic strip that runs in my paper. A week ago (on the link above) she finds a stray cat and brings it inside. Dad is allergic. Mom knows that Dad is allergic. He's not lethally allergic, he'll just be in a state of constant misery. Daughter Luann now knows that Dad is allergic to cats.

So, given that one household member is allergic to this little stray (no collar), the logical solution is (a) try to find it's owner, quick; (b) take the cat to Animal Control or some shelter; or (c) consider keeping it. Most people would probably choose (a) or (b); apparently Luann's author has a really short attention span (or just doesn't care about Dad all that much), and it looks like the strip is heading in the direction of (c).

Day 9/10 update

I was busy typing away when Day 9 of NaNoWriMo passed over into Day 10. Unfortunately, I finished out Day 9 with a mere 24,669 words, but just a few minutes ago, I passed the halfway mark, and am finishing out tonight with 25,049 words. Halfway there. I plan on finishing by the 20th, so that I have another 10 days to continue to pad the final wordcount. With any luck, that second pass will let me top 75k.

I wish I had more traffic

Over on TalkLeft, I saw this. Now, TL gets a lot of traffic, and so they can make this kind of plea, and some did apparently answer it last time. I'd make the same plea, but with less than 5 readers (total, not per day), it's unlikely that I will get the same response.

Day 6 update

Almost a full week has gone by in the NaNoWriMo project. In order to stay on track, I needed to finish out today with at least 10,002 words. I slacked off yesterday in order to attend a convention, and added only 800 words or so.

I'm not worried though. I added about 2500 words today, thus maintaining the average of 1667 per day that I need to finish on time. And besides, I was already ahead - right now, I have 16,751 words written. Tomorrow, with a little hard work, I should break the 20k barrier. Hopefully, by Wednesday at the latest, I shall be half done. I'll keep you posted.

Day three update.

Meant to post this last night, but decided I had been sitting at the computer long enough. I'm currently sitting at 10,337 words for my NaNoWriMo novel, which puts me at being more than 20% done. Holy crud. I look at the word count every once in a while when I am writing, mainly to see how far I have to go before I hit my daily goal, which is higher than the 1,667 that is required to get 50,000 words in 30 days.

My daily goal isn't higher because I want to write more than 50k (I do, but that's beside the point). It's higher because I know that there will be days where I just won't have time to get in more than 500 or 1000 words, and I want to have a buffer against such times.

Plus, it would be nice, when visiting the family for Turkey Day, to casually announce, "I've finished my novel."

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo

Well, here it is, the beginning of Day 2. My current word count is now up to 4,138 words, most written yesterday. I've added a couple hundred this morning, but the bulk of my writing gets done in the early afternoon and the late evening.

And, according to NaNoWriMo, people have written 47,393,236 words so far. Not bad for a day and a half. With an estimated 70,000 participants, that's less than 700 words per person, but I suspect that there are a lot who haven't updated their word count yet.

My wife is the greatest. . .

Today is my birthday. For various and sundry reasons, it's not a day I celebrate - I just don't see much point of making a big deal about what is, in essence, a rather arbitrary marker. Anyway, my wife left very early this morning on a business trip, so I figured that she would simply leave a card or we'd do something to celebrate when she got back.

Instead, she sent a friend out to search for a movie and some candy. This friend also got a couple random Star Wars related party favors, and dropped everything off this afternoon, saying "Happy birthday! Your wife wanted to surprise you."





Oh, by the way - Kyle, happy birthday, one day early.

The clock is running. . . .

NaNoWriMo is now in full swing. The clock on their main site is running, and I only have 29 days, 15 hours, 2 minutes and 33 seconds left until the end of November.

But I have started, and while it's only 399 words, it's .798% of the way done. (Maybe I shouldnt' think about percentages until I have 5k or 10k done.)

Ooops. . . 29 days, 15 hours, 1 minute and 3 seconds left. Back to work.