Nanowrimo Day 18
Word total: 4,405
Words total: 37,364
Words remaining: 12,636
If you hadn’t noticed, I missed posting yesterday. I wrote about two hundred words early in the day, and by evening, a massive headache and a scary cough descended on me. I’m not sure what brought it on, but after watching a late movie with Julie, I went to bed without writing. It was the first day in my Nanowrimo history where I had not met the Goal—at least as far as I remember. There were a few days in the past where I fell asleep before meeting the goal, only to wake up in the middle of the night to pound out the remaining words for that day. Yesterday, I did not wake until late this morning.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I immediately began pecking on the keyboard. I aimed to finish yesterday’s words. I surprised myself moving past yesterday’s goal and hitting today’s by mid-afternoon. I spent much of today writing exposition for what should have happened earlier. It’s not exactly good storytelling, but at least it provides a somewhat fragile framework for what could have been a story. I will continue pushing through the last six or so days of writing. I will not have actually told a story, but I will have successfully written lots of words.
I have been formulating plans to write after finishing. It is unlikely that I will tell many more stories. I plan to write often about interesting topics, interesting to me, that is—and I’m using ‘interesting’ in the sense of writing about things I care about, not in the way of blowing off people I don’t want to hear. I’ll give it a go after finishing this year’s Marathon. (And, yes, I realize how easy it is to plan and how difficult it is to follow through with plans.)
Rereading the above has given me a headache. I have included editing as a big part of my going forward plans. The Marathon does a few things very right. What it also does is destroy any ability I have to write coherently