NaNo Log: Day 4.

You're supposed to read the blog title in Captain Kirk's voice. :D

So my goal for today is be at about 6700 words. I'm sitting at about a 1000 short right now. Not a deal, it's only seven p.m. and I gots da plans for the rest. Hehe. In ll fairness, though (funny how keep saying that to justify myself), we did have a catastrophic car issue that kept us at the mercy of mechanics and tow trucks all day.

This is my second year participating in NaNo. Last year i had a completely different plan of literary action, insofar as I had none. Well, not exactly none. But all I had was a little seed of an idea that I just planted on the 1st and waited to see what grew. Flew totally by the seat of my pants. It was way too much fun.

This year I planned. A lot. I have plot points galore, outlines, research notes, visual cues, you name it. So far my characters are being really gracious and magnanimous and lining up like I've planned. So far, anyway. Of course, I've given them a bit of freedom to walk around, but the paths they've taken have been helpful instead of plopping me into a well. :D

Something else different this year is that we (as in my NaNo region) are in a word war with another region in southern California. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, I think the wagers are stuffed animal and fashion dolls (don't ask). My group is pretty intent on all out victory. War is hell.

I will close for now for I must return to the front lines for now. Send care packages!

Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow...

...and maybe the day after that. I'm the Queen of Procrastination. Well, maybe not the queen, but probably an ambassador on a bad day and a low-level bureaucrat the rest of the time. I can't help it. It's in my nature. But the truly terrible thing is that my strain of the sickness only manifests when writing is concerned. All my household stuff gets taken care of, the cooking done, the errands completed without being put off. It makes one weep just thinking about it. Well, I'm tearing up, anyways.

The more I've been seriously dipping my toes into the writing community, the more I've found that I'm not alone. Apparently, there are mountains of resources and abodes for literary procrastinators, I just haven't checked them out yet. Isn't that terrible?

I have a theory, though. I think that I use up all of my "complete a task" discipline on all of my non-writing tasks for the day. As much as I push myself to get the boring things done, the less I have to motivate my daily word count. Hmm, I think I'll try that one. Maybe it'll get me out of some housework. :)

*sigh* Like that will ever happen. But, hey, a girl can dream.

Most kidding aside, I've been examining my writing habits lately, trying to see what I can do to be more productive. Unfortunately, I have no "optimum" window for writing. Morning, noon, or night, there's complete random productivity. Location doesn't seem to help all that much, either. Although, I would love to wrangle a dedicated workspace one of these days. Noise levels are hit and miss; sometime the silence is golden, and at other times the racket is awesome.

Two things that have been giving me more consistent results are planning and reporting. Lately, I've been trying to structure my work rather than fly by the seat of my pants and hope for the best (well, aside from the first draft). I LOVE FreeMind for that (saw the advice on Spacejock's site-fabulous!). Yeah, you could idea bubble on paper, but this is a cool computer program! Also, being involved in a writing group has kept me on the ball. "Reporting" my status updates and receiving professional feedback motivates me to keep on going. And in case you're wondering, yes, I was that kid that craved getting the gold star.

I'm not sure that this is a fix all way to go about things, but it's definitely a start, which is what I'm after.