Oh No! NaNo

34,607 words!

         That's where I am right now.  I have officially fallen behind, though not terribly so. I am definitely going to have to pick up the pace this week. Last week I got kind of slack at times. And I let other things get in my way.

          One big thing is I'm keeping up with my blog posts, responding to the comments I receive, and commenting on other blogs.  This all amounts to thousands of words. For example, my debate post from last Thursday amounted to over 1200 words, my comment rebuttals (after all this was a debate) probably surpassed 500 words, and additional comments I made on other sites probably passed the 800 word mark. Heck that's 2500 words in one day that I could have written on my novel. But I'm really committed to the blog although I may be putting a little too much depth and research into the daily posts. Maybe I need to lighten up until the end of the month, but I really like to try to shoot for substance and quality.

         Then Wednesday morning I was planning on really putting in my all out effort into the novel. Then my internet went out.  My whole network shut down.  Should have been the prime opportunity to just work on the novel, but I was so concerned about my internet that I spent most of the morning trying to get it going again. That's when I really get frustrated with computers.  I was so worn out after that episode that I really didn't feel like writing that much. I know that  Tamika of The Write Worship got off line and halted her blog all last week--- how did that work for you, Tamika?  I think I would have a hard time doing that move.
         
         I just kept finding other things to do all week to keep me from the novel.  But I don't think I need to beat myself up too badly.  I guess a lot of us have things we need to do sometimes that we keep finding reasons to postpone.  Often they are very good reasons. However, I think you just have to make yourself do whatever it is you got to do and set some special time aside for the activity.

         And I'm still flying by the seat of my pants.  Still no plot outline, except for a general idea in my head where it's all going.  I think one of the things that is helping me keep up my word count is that I'm skipping around.  Some times I go back to the beginning or to the middle and write on those parts for a while and sometimes I start writing toward the end. I don't really think I'm affecting my continuity in any negative way and this helps me when I get stuck on a certain part of the story.  I just move over to a different part that's easier to write about at that moment.

         So enough of this nearly free form stream of consciousness babbling.  I don't know if I've said anything that helps you, but this is where I am at right now.

          How about you-- NaNo or not:   Do you have an ongoing project?   What's your favorite way to avoid doing what you should be doing?  Could you take a week off from being online like Tamika?  What if you no longer had the internet, period---how badly would that mess up your life?  Am I nuts to be posing complex debate topics that take a lot of time?  Can you believe that Carrie and Stephen humored me with such long comments to my topic with really good answers -- I was humbled to have them spend so much time.  Carrie, if you're still working on the NaNo novel, I'm sorry if I took any of your writing time away from that, but what the heck--writing comments is writing too-- especially comments of substance.