NaNoWriMo Update: Week 1

Good morning and salutations! The first week of November and the first week of the 2019 NaNoWriMo challenge has sped past, and I thought I'd give you an update about how it's all been going here at Bag End.This is only the second year I've ever even tried to participate in NaNo with any kind of serious intent. In the past, I have loved the idea of it, but it never lined up well with my writing schedule. Either I had just finished writing a story and was hard at work editing, or I was prepping for a book launch and doing all the polishing things, or various other things. But last year I was actually at the beginning of a project, and this year I know I have at least 50,000 words left to write in my current rough draft, and a goal to finish the book by the end of December... so NaNo is just the incentive I was looking for to help me stay on target.The first week of NaNo started well.

Day 1: 2,009 words

I pounded out the words on day 1 in an effort to start strong and maybe get ahead so that when company comes for the week of Thanksgiving I don't have to excuse myself to go write instead of enjoying fellowship with my family.

Day 2: 1,400 words

Not quite staying ahead of the game the way I hoped, but with my extra words on day 1 I was still doing okay.

Day 3: 640 words

NaNo starting on a weekend was rough, as I usually don't have a lot of writing time on the weekends. They are days I reserve for family, but my super supportive husband is very eager for me to actually finish this book before the end of the year and is making sure I get some writing done every day. I stumbled around a bit and then logged my words, but somehow the site didn't save the entry and I couldn't fix it the next day to back-date the words I had actually written on Nov. 3rd no matter how hard I tried to get the site to acknowledge that fact... this discouraged me a bit...

Day 4: 4,530 words

My best day of writing so far. I got caught up, felt like the words were flowing, the story began to unfold nicely.

Day 5: 644 words

As I coasted into the latter half of the first week, distractions slipped in, along with a very real sense of, "why do I bother?" I'm not sure where it came from, all I know is that it struck with a vengeance. I grew more and more discouraged as I flailed about for the words and couldn't find them.

Day 6: 759 words

Discouragement dug a nice little niche in my soul as I began to fall behind. Falling behind is a thing that is dangerous for me when it comes to NaNo, because I get more and more discouraged and that makes it harder and harder to write... a vicious cycle, true, but no less real.

Day 7: 1,859 words

Made back the ground I'd lost because my husband told me to sit down and do a 5 minute sprint. That was enough to get the creative juices flowing and I continued to write for another hour after that, ending the week pretty much right on target with 11,870 words. All in all, not a bad week of writing. I wasn't quite as ahead as I'd been hoping, but the outlook was promising, and the story was tripping along nicely. I am loving getting to know some of these secondary characters from earlier books who are stepping into the limelight and really getting a chance to shine.How about you? I'd love to hear about what you're working on! If you're a writer, tell me whether you're participating in NaNo or not and how it's going! And if you're not a writer... tell me... what sorts of things do you hope to find in the final book of a series you've loved reading?