Still slogging along

Yesterday, I only squeezed in 519 words. Guess I couldn't sustain the hyper-productivity of Saturday.

I had set myself up for an unrealistic goal anyway. I had wanted to reach 20,000 words by yesterday's end. Hah. I didn't really want to spend another five hours or so working on my novel.

Maybe it wouldn't have taken quite that long, but it definitely would have taken at least three. And I was worn out. I know--not an excuse. At least I forced myself to put down those 519.

Today went better. I wrote in my journal and then banged out 1,300 words or so before I tackled the rest of my day. Thought I'd try taking a page out of Michael Masterson's book(s). He encourages everyone to start the day with an activity that will move you toward a life goal. Once you've gotten that under your belt, you'll be more inspired to greater productivity the rest of the day.

Darn if I wasn't incredibly productive today. I blew through several different projects and made ridiculous progress through my mile-long task list.

And then I banged out another 1,000 words in roughly an hour, bringing today's total count to 2,309. I'll take it.

If I put out another 2,000 words tomorrow, I'll at least have met Chris Baty's recommended Week Two minimum. I'm pretty sure that's quite a bit better than I was doing this far into NaNoWriMo 2003. (Talk about ugly. I started Thanksgiving weekend with only 34,000 words. I had to write just over 16,000 words in three days.)

So far, things are going surprisingly well. Not sure if it's because I'm way behind schedule and just haven't hit that brick wall yet, or perhaps I'm simply getting the hang of this "write-anything-even-though-it's-crap" mentality.

Either way, I'm producing like crazy. And I'm feeling way better about myself as a writer than I have in a very long time.