NaNoWriMovember Day 28

Yes. I missed yesterday. Yes. I have an excuse: I've ended up with another cold. I don't know how, but it laid me out last night. Today was better, but I'm not yet 100% (yes, Mother, I'm drinking lots of fluids, and I'm eating just fine).

Anyway. No update yesterday, and no writing. The two kinda go hand in hand. Today I wrote 5000 words (again) and have gotten my total count up to 43K. That's not so bad. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm supposed to be going to ultimate frisbee on Monday night, I would say that I'm within reach of winning. Perhaps the cold is actually a blessing in disguise in that regard; not so good to be out running around in the rain after dark.

I procrastinated pretty much all day long with the whole writing thing. Got up at 8am, meant to start writing immediately, got distracted by breakfast, then televised Men's Downhill Alpine racing from Lake Louise, then a variety of other things. Got about 1700 words in sometime mid-afternoon, then we had to get groceries. By the time we got back, we had to eat dinner then run out the door again to see the opening night of a friend's play on Granville Island. When we got back home, I was distracted once again for about an hour. That took me to about 11pm.

Then I actually started writing. I wrote 3300 words between 11pm and 12:30am. That's a lot of words for an hour and a half. So I ask myself, if I can write that much in that short a period of time, why the hell haven't I finished this novel already?

Motivation. Those 3300 words were really words I was particularly happy with. There might be a couple passages in there that will spur some interesting ideas in a second draft, but on the whole, it's fodder for the word count. It's all about content at this point - I just want to hit the 50K so that I have a reasonable amount of pages and ideas before I start that second draft, but I'm beginning to feel (wait, who am I kidding - 'beginning'?) that I don't really need this extra stuff and I just want to start the rewrite now. Forget the 50K goal. Enjoy my weekend without having to spend time worrying about the novel.

But I can't - can't seem to let go. So, finally, after hours of trying to avoid it, I sit my ass down and get something done. And it's good - but it's late. And I can't understand why I just don't do it earlier and avoid all the procrastination bullshit.

Because 7000 words still feels like a lot, is why. :P