NaNoWriMo Update

Hello all! Just dropping by for a NaNo update. If you take a gander at my lovely little word count tracker thingies to the left, you'll see that I'm doing pretty well so far! I'm actually a little ahead of where I'm supposed to be according to my fancy pants NaNo stats graph (below).

Not too shabby. Especially since, this time last NaNo, I had long since gone crazy (or, as my husband claims, gone zombie) and given up. But this time around, I'm right on track to finish this book by the end of the month.

So what am I doing differently this time that's making it work? A couple of things actually. 

1. I'm still spending time with my husband. A lot of the time, I'm writing on my laptop and he's playing a video game, but he's only a few feet away from me. We can still talk. If you remember from last time, this was probably the biggest problem for me. I luuurve him, guys. And when I was writing during so much of my "spare" time that I saw him about ten minutes a day, I must've gotten separation anxiety or something. I don't often feel I have anything in common with dogs, but I guess that's not 100% the case. At least I didn't rip up anything in the house. 

2. I, umm....actually like the book I'm writing. Last time around, I was trying to make myself write a contemporary. Thing is, I don't generally read contemporaries. I'd never tried writing one before. If it's not in some way a fantasy or paranormal, it has to have one hell of a hook to draw me in. And I thought I had a pretty awesome hook. But as I got deeper and deeper into the book, I realized I just didn't care. And how am I supposed to write about something I don't care about? Whereas my new book has completely ingrained itself in my soul. I love every goram second of it. (If you don't know what goram is, go watch Firefly. Like, seriously. This is a much bigger emergency than when you hadn't yet seen Sherlock, as Firefly is the best show ever created in the history of television.) Moral of the story? If you absolutely love what you're writing, you're less likely to turn into this: 

3. Last, but certainly not least, I'm not making myself just write whatever comes to mind with no regard for quality. I actually dumped one entire chapter the day after I wrote it and wrote a new one to take its place. I know that there's not supposed to be time for that kind of thing in NaNo, but frankly, I cannot write that way. At all. I'm one of those people who will sometimes sit and stare at the computer screen for half an hour as I try to come up with exactly the right word. I don't want to throw something in there and go back to fix it later. I know I said back here that it was a good thing, and that it was liberating. But you know what? I was lying to myself. I was trying to convince myself that I could be like all those other prolific writers out there. But when it comes down to it, I want to do it right the first time. I mean, I'll still go back and edit the crap out of the MS, but it's not the same thing as writing something I know I'm just going to delete later. For me, that makes me wonder what the point is? And why would I be able to fully devote myself to something when I don't even see the point? So I'm writing at my pace, my way. And instead of being a mutant zombie, I'm more like this:

And that, ladies and gents, is my very most favorite Doctor from Doctor Who. Which you should also watch. Pretty sure my TV recommendations are giving me some serious nerd cred. :)