Yeah, I’ve missed a few days, despite saying I would post every day.
However, I warned you. My body and soul aim to take the path of least resistance to the satisfactory level of success. And that little NaNoWriMo widget you see to your right has been great justification to not write daily posts. “Even I’m getting annoying with my word count posts. Anyone who cares will just look at the widget…. Now, where were we, jelly donut?”
Okay, I haven’t eaten one, but I deserve one. 11 days in and I am actually a teeny tiny bit ahead…. 186 words if you like numbers. Which is no one. Which is 0.
Regardless, I am excited with how this is going. After accumulating almost 20,000 words, you begin to realize the power of momentum, and not letting your word excrement story down. I’m 37% the way there, which doesn’t sound very encouraging, but looking at the time it has taken, I feel stupid for not having done this before.
It hasn’t all been rosy. In fact, Saturday was a no-word day. Not even phone words.
But embarking on this word vomiting journey as made me realized how many opportunities there are in a day to write, even just a little bit. It’s not romanticized like I always wanted it to be, holed up in some writing retreat, muses dancing and twirling, shoving ideas and donuts and candy into my mouth as I write.
Its much more like me in my underwear on the couch. Or in between sets at the gym. Or half asleep. Or waiting for my damn car to be fixed.
I am starting to treat writing like a job, like a skill to hone. I have to show up, I have to put in the work. And more than counting words, that’s what I wanted from NaNoWriMo. Even though I am only at 37%, I feel like I’ve won.
I do plan on finishing this race, as no one stops 10 miles into a marathon:
“Hey guys, I’m feeling pretty done over here. Perchance you could bring the finish line over here?”
Actually, I bet a lot of people do. I would. Running sucks.
Peter Monaco 
Are you proposing (perhaps) a correlation between “running sucks” and “writing sucks”? No, no, no; no jelly doughnuts for you (though I will send you a virtual Tootsie Pop if you learn to spell “doughnut” correctly instead of the lazy person’s way of “donut.” Do you understand that if one counts words in the old-fashioned way from typing class (wherein the longer words are, the more words they stand for, starting with 5-letter words and going on up), then you’ve actually written more words if you write more letters? Does this make sense to you? Why not use up as many long-winded words as possible, and maybe get an old fogies’ word count that’s higher than what you normally get? (And we old fogies all spell doughnut as “doughnut”!)
Some days are no-word-days; some days are a-few-word-days; and then there are those magical days when the word count seems to go up at a fast pace. True, some of what we write may be awful, but we at least are getting the story down on paper/screen. And then we can edit later!
And yes, writing is a job. As much of a job as the one I go to Mon-Fri and get paid for. Except I think writing is harder because there can be so many distractions to keep us from writing; like jelly doughnuts, or coffee, or life in general, or any number of things. When my story is going well; nothing can distract me except something urgent – like checking the latest update on Facebook!
🙂
Good for you! It sounds like you are really finding the drive to do this!
And just because you don’t have enough to keep you busy, I nominated you for a Liebster Award..lol. Well, that and because I really like this blog.
Well, I don’t hate my NaNoWriMo exactly … not the day after Donation Day for goodness sake … but the muse of this years effort was just called away on a family emergency for THREE WEEKS. So now I sit about 18000 words into it, with no SME. It is, after all, the story of HER life. So now what? Start all over with another idea. *grumble, mumble* “It was a dark and stormy night …”
Awesome, dude! You’ve learned the lesson. You’ve made the habit. NaNo is already a success! Congrats on your progress and keep it up.
Gratz on even starting, it’s a scary idea