Too Good to be True

As I type this, I’m two days ahead on NaNo, which is a very good thing because there’s only a week left and for the first time I’m thinking I might not finish.

I believe I mentioned in the first NaNo post I did that one of my handicaps this year is the kitchen renovation we were planning on. The renovation has gone as far as it can without the counters, but at least I’m able to start putting stuff back into the cupboards. And surprisingly it hasn’t really interfered with my NaNo word count . . . until now.

After a shaky Wednesday (words wise) I had a stellar Thursday (4,000 words!) so Friday I figured I figured I could phone my sister to wish her a happy birthday and maybe work on getting rid of some of the bins in the dining room so the hubby could start installing the new floor.

One of the sets of dishes we have for every day use is stoneware. Guess what? Turns out stoneware is as heavy as … well, stone. I tried to pick up the bin of dishes to move it into the kitchen to put them away and wrenched something in my shoulder. Pulled a muscle? Pinched a nerve? I have no idea. But it hurts to type. Even doing this post hurts.

So the home stretch of NaNo is going to be an interesting. I knew my steady progress was too good to be true.

One of the common pieces of advice for doing NaNo is “Don’t stop to edit.” This year I’ve had no problem following this piece of advice. In fact, a couple of times the story wandered off into parts unknown and I just stopped and started the scene over again. And I’m making notes as I go along, which should make editing easier.

I’m putting a lot of effort into my character’s training as a mercenary, which I thought was just going to get cut during the edits, but now I think it could stay if I scale it down. Right now it’s like a Hogwarts for mercenaries, but that makes it way too big. For now I’ll just get on with the story.

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Wordage Report

My best day last week was 4,068 words, the worst day was 720 words. But I had enough extra words built up that even on the 720 day I did not fall behind of where I should have been. Thanks to the 4,068 day, even if I can manage 1,000 a day until my shoulder’s better I shouldn’t fall behind. Guess we’ll just have to see how motivated I am.

Goals From Last Week

1. Book flood stories – I picked out 14 flash stories for this year’s book flood.
2. Blog posts – got them all done, but not on time (unless you count this one).
3. Firestorm – this book is probably going to be my longest book yet, when it’s done.

Goals For This Week

1. Start edits (if necessary) to the book flood stories.
2. Keep up the good work with the blog posts.
3. Push through the pain for more words on Firestorm.