Record Productivity

I have so many things to say, I’m not sure where to start…

The first thing I did today was typed up all the material I wrote pen & ink this past weekend. I want in all in electronic form, one so it can be officially counted by NaNoWriMo’s counting bots and two so I can edit with ease. Not now of course, that comes later. It turns out that my rough estimate was a little under. I wrote over 1,700 while away. That was the end of chapter thirteen and the start of fourteen. Today in the morning I worked on getting chapter fourteen done and succeeded. I had a great idea to change up the ending a bit that makes it all work a little better. My new fourteen involves Meghin going after Pyotr who has been taken into the hive.

In the afternoon I tried something my writing buddy, AbbyDarling, suggested to me. It’s called Write or Die. It’s kind of exactly what it sounds like except that “die” actually means “hear annoying songs and noises.” The feature I like best is that it counts your words as you type and displays the total at the bottom of the screen. At this point in my WriMo I have a certain number of chapters I feel I have to write – that would be eight after chapter fourteen. On the other hand, I only needed to do 12,000 more words. That’s just 1,500 words per chapter. That’s really short for the chapters I’ve been doing so far. With Write or Die’s constantly counting word count I have a better feel for when I need to move on to the next thing in the novel. It really worked for me I only annoying sounds twice and then chapter fifteen was done. Later, I tried it again for chapter sixteen and again I produced (nearly) a hole chapter in the required word limit.

	1697
90
lab.drwicked.com

I love it, but I don’t want to get to the point that I rely on it. So I’ll try not using the widget tomorrow. I’m torn though, because productivity is really important to me at this point. I want to finish on Thanksgiving Day and that means that I need to be doing 4,000 a day for three days in row. With all the work I did today I actually managed 4,200 words today. That is by far my most productive day yet this month (former record was day 8’s 3,800). Go me!

Of course I can’t take quite take all the credit. Several people have been encouraging me all along and especially now that it’s so close to the end and I’m so far behind where I want to be. I was really discouraged yesterday. But today, I’ve caught up! I’ve more than caught up, I’m ahead again (if only just)! Thanks to all those who have urged me on! According to my personal tzolk’in today is the day of Speaking Defeat. An ominous portent to be sure. Sometimes it’s good to go with the flow of the day and sometimes it’s a day to go against the flow. That was today. I so easily could have spoken of nothing but defeat, but now I’m so close to the win, I can really feel it. There’s a bit yet to go, but the end is really is sight.

By now I should have 41,675 words.
My current count is 42,031 words.