A Quick NaNoWriMo Check-In

I honestly wasn't sure how NaNoWriMo was going to go for me this year.  After the year I've had and all the struggles with my horse's care, I wasn't sure I'd be able to devote enough time to writing to be successful in the challenge, even with Panama going back to the corral just before November started.

As it turned out, though, I needn't have worried.  I don't know if the past year has taught me better time management skills, or just made me eager to do my own thing once again after six months of being at the barn almost constantly, but I dove right into writing and have been writing consistently every day since.  I've had some prolific days (a few 2,000-word days and one 8,000 word day), and some less prolific days (a few 200 to 400 word days), but I've made sure to write even just a little every day to maintain the habit (and to keep getting the achievement badges on nanowrimo.org for daily updating).

It helps somewhat that I've had a light work month as far as freelance work goes, possibly because of the holidays.  It's allowed me to devote more time to writing.  But I've also been managing my time a little better lately, I think - more on that in a later post.

Right now, I'm at 28,189 words.  That's more than halfway to the 50,000-word goal to "win" NaNoWriMo.  Of course, my personal goal is to finish a round of revisions and rewrites on the novel, so I will soon change my goal to be more reflective of what I actually want my finished word count to be - probably around 90,000 words.

We're halfway through the month, which makes it seem like there's a lot left, but in reality it's only a little over two weeks.  Once NaNoWriMo ends, I'll have to find a way to continue writing and working on my novel while still maintaining my freelance work and my other businesses.  I do want to keep working on this novel, and hopefully get it published this coming year, rather than petering out on it as I've done in the past.  Fortunately, it feels like I've hit my stride this time, so I'm hoping I'll be able to maintain this habit.