Nano update

It’s the third of November, and I’m already slacking with my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s mostly because of work and feeling ill — I had today off, actually, and obviously haven’t been able to write much. I’m supposed to have 5,000 words by now but I only have a little over half of that. Tomorrow is Peter’s wedding, which means I won’t be much around all day. Which means I’ll be around 2,000 words behind again. Ah, such is life.

Edit: I’ve decided to embed my Nano count into my posts like Danielle and Lenneth, since scrolling all the way down to the bottom of the page (where I’ve had my meter for a while now) is tedious. I’m a sheep! (But why is my counter border-less?)

[pfmeter id=1 target=50000 progress=2871]

But, other than my eternal lagging behind, I think story-wise, it’s going along well. Alright, I’ll confess, I’m rewriting an old story for this year’s Nano. And I’m probably going at it rather horribly, which is why I’m upping my internal goal to around 60,000 words instead (or even more!) because once I trim things, it will probably fall short of the 50,000 mark. (Of course, let’s ignore the fact that I am going to be amazed if I even finish the 50,000 words. Go me.)

However, I actually feel rather good while I’m writing. I know my characters, and they flow out of my fingers and into my trusty ol’ Notepad. Or sometimes they surprise me, too, and I like that.

One thing I’ve realized, which I believe may be the reason I never got after the second weeks of my previous Nano attempts, is because I’ve been trying to write the novel in order. Prologue, chapter one, chapter two. And I lose steam after that. (Or thereabouts.) But that’s never been how I write, really. My previous stories have all been written out of order, according to what I felt like writing. Alright, so it’s disjointed, but that’s what editing is for, right?

So that’s what i’m doing now. I have my Nano setup and it’s working for me. I have a folder named Nanowrimo 2006 on my desktop, and inside is the Excel spreadsheet report card thingie plus my Nano TiddlyWiki, and inside that again is another folder named Story, which contains text files of each chapter/snippet I’m writing. I also have this short PHP script I’m running on my local that points to that folder and counts how many words I have cumulative, for easy posting here in my progress meter and on the Nano website.

Now here I am procrastinating (blogging is one way, but there are numerous other ways I have employed). I still feel rather ill — no fever, but my body aches, especially my neck and shoulder area. My throat is also sore, has been since yesterday afternoon. If this worsens I’ll be in quite a fix for tomorrow. :p Writing when you are ill just doesn’t seem very… interesting, I guess. I might try and squeeze a few words in before I sleep tonight, but I don’t know.

I have the urge to open up Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block. Or White Oleander by Janet Fitch. I need some lyrical prose, dammit.

Alright, off to sleep. Or thereabouts.

(Of course I had to do OneWord first.)