Before I litanize the word count, Nienke’s raised some interesting questions. NaNoWriMo is about writing a 50,000 word novel. In theory, that should be a work of fiction. But the rules are 50,000 new words and the verifier only counts words. It’s designed to help people who’ve never written that many words before to realize that, yes, they can do it.

This is my 4th NaNo. I’ve won all the previous times I’ve competed. I have no reason to believe I won’t win this time. (Although, if something doesn’t change over these last two days…) What I have struggled with this year is writing anything at all with or without any regularity.

My goal, then, is to write regularly, every day (with some planned exceptions — hubby arrives on the 20th and departs on the 28th, so I’m not going to ignore him while he’s here; I’ve planned for it). To meet the 50k goal, I need to average 2300 words per day.

But here’s the kicker, while I don’t anticipate ever being able to publish a word of what I’m writing for this year’s NaNo, I plan to leverage it into something usable down the road. It’s easy not to want to modify it, because it’s all designed to help me map my future — it’s an essay about what I want to do when I grow up. It has horrible POV shifts — sometimes I’m pretending to be a character; sometimes I’m myself. Sometimes I get a character; sometimes an unusual creature (Rottikans) shows up. I’m having a blast with it. When it’s all done, I’ll be looking for repetition in the themes that recur throughout the month — were they a passing fancy, or did they keep coming up? Maybe that’s an area to steer my writing toward.

I’m still learning the craft of writing (aren’t we all?), so I’m looking for ways to improve. So, Nienke (and anyone else wondering), I hope this explains why some things may work more easily for me this year than while I’m writing a novel. But, frankly, for me, it’s not uncommon for me to toss things like this into my novel. For instance, year before last, I tossed in character to do lists. It helped me get through subsequent sections. During revisions, I excised that section. During NaNo, word count is king, so if you want to revise that opening scene and you just can’t hold off? Make a note and redo the new opening as new text. You’ll fix it in the revisions. But you haven’t lost that hard won word count.

Now, for today’s count. I really, really want to write more. I got out of work way late, because I have a project I must finish on a deadline, and the only time I had to devote to it (because I’m filling in for another person who just had a baby as well as doing my job) was after work. So I got home at seven. Then hubby wanted to chat. But I have to get up early, because the local NaNo people are supposed to meet at Panera tomorrow night, so I can’t stay too late at work, and I have to get up early either way. So, I’ve whined enough. Time to wrap up and head to work. Er, bed.