Just over 13,000 words. A far cry from 50,000 but it was fun trying.

Again, real life got in the way, even during the week I took off for it.  Nevermind.   It was the best fun I’ve had writing in ages.

One thing I took from this year’s attempt was that I really need to dedicate “proper” time to my writing and by “proper” time I mean dedicating working time, that is treating it like a second job, to my writing. Especially if I want to ever think about doing it for a living.

The problem with that is, with two part time jobs and all the stuff I’ve dedicated time to in the evenings, I don’t really have the working time to spare.

Oh, hold on… I’ve just quit the job with the after-school care. Looks like I might have the time after all…

This year’s NaNoWriMo progress has slowed to a crawl, but that was to be expected.

Still enjoying the process but the writing is certainly moving slowly.

Having fun and enjoying the experience, still.

Also, I have been chatting with mrBen about podcasting…

That is a plan, a vague plan at that, but still a plan dependent on me getting more work finished.

Despite the sudden pressure to get more of this year’s WriMo completed, I have been writing bits of the Desert Of Zin story and generally brainstorming other ideas. Not what I was expecting to be doing today but any creative work is good.

It has been a long haul today. With church work, the after-school care and Revolution in the evening, I only got in about 8ish.

It certainly has been a long day. And all the longer with 1667 words waiting to be written.

But despite my lack of enthusiasm for the WriMo today…

1802 words today.

6863 words in total.

To make the 50,000 words in 30 days it’s advisable to do 1667 words a day. Today I bet that target. And I’m feeling damn good about it.

I’m feeling good about it even though meeting every daily target so far should have netted me a total of 10,000 words. And I have just over 5000 in total.

But I’m okay with that.

I’ve realized something about my writing this time round. On previous Wrimos I have tried to push the 1667 daily words from the first day. And the passion has always burnt out because I punish myself to get the daily target and feel like I’ve let myself down when I don’t get there.

I don’t enjoy the experience and I give up. But this time I’m just taking my time. It has been six days so far and I’ve hit my daily target once. And that’s okay.

I’m pacing myself. Tomorrow I might not write anything, or I might match today’s number. I just don’t know.

To try and keep the pace, I’ve taken next week off work. Even if I claw my way over the daily finishing line, I’ll be happy.

So.

1710 words today.

5061 words in total.

Hmm, yes.

Still not making my minimum daily target of 1667, but I’ve written more today than on any other individual day.

As long as I keep that pattern going, everything will be fine. 

Day 4 came and went.

Ruthy passed her flu-like badness on to me and the weekend was very much a shambles.  However the has been some Day 5 progress.  Not much, but any progress is good.

Sore throat, headache and general feeling of blah hampered today’s progress. But Ruthy has returned from her big adventure so there will be plenty of cracking the whip to keep me going.

The highlight of today’s additions is introducing a donner kebab to a Science Fantasy setting.

2095 words.

Not much time for writing today. Still encouraged. Get there eventually…

1225 words.

Difficulties include getting started, getting that initial sentence down.

Total for the day?

838 words. Not brilliant. But not bad at all…

I’ve not really spent any time thinking about it and my intention was to give it a miss this year.  With everything that’s gone on recently and with loads of guff happening at work I really couldn’t be bothered.

But, despite myself, I sat down one evening last week and had a think about what I might like to write about.  You know, ‘IF I did NaNoWriMo this year, what WOULD I write about?’ kind of thing.

I poured over previous material, over everything I’ve started, abandoned and (occasionally) finished, over my scribbled notes and barely legible ideas and was largely uninspired by all of it.

Then I remembered something else.  The Fractured Land.

This was an idea, with a suitably cheesy name, that popped into my head when Edgy, Enzo and I had started to get some Call of Cthulhu gaming up and running.
I was thinking at the time they would prefer something with a bit more action than Cthulhu and with a Science-Fantasy feel alongside the dark and brooding horror I was introducing them to.

So I came up with a few ideas and used ‘The Fractured Land’ as a catch-all term until something better came along.

But, as with many things, it was shelved until I had the time, or the motivation, to actually do something with it.

So, I thought about the concept as it stood then and tried to work out some way to tell the story that the game was meant to be.

That proved to be a disaster as the scale of the thing was starting to get silly, and I was starting to feel like I was drowning in it.

However, the next day a seed of the story just fell into place and then another, and another, and another…

I reckon it might work.  I haven’t planned too much of the story out and I have a vague (a very vague!) idea where it’s meant to go.

I’ll not share it here and now as it’s not a full formed idea yet and I’m not wanting to analyse it beforehand.  (In case it doesn’t really happen.)

All I know is that come tomorrow morning I’ll have to start writing something…