NaNoWriMo 2013

You may or may not be aware, but I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month again this year. For the uninitiated, this is an annual event where writers attempt to pen, pencil, or type 50,000 words in just 30 days. My current word count is 10,523.

Par for day 12 is 20,000, which puts me at a very sad 9,477 words behind. 

I participated in 2010, writing 80K of Chasing Shadows 100K+ words, and in 2012 I wrote more than 50K of Fire Born. I figured hey, I wrote the first book of the Firehouse 343 series for NaNo last year, why not get the next one written during NaNo this year?  Actually, my word count is 20,306, but I can't count half of that because I started the book before NaNo, and I can only count the words written since the start of the challenge. This is apparently called "rebelling", when a writer enters a book begun before November 1st. The point is to start a new novel, but I'm one of those people that likes to complete something before starting something new, and I'd already gotten some words written for Fire Loved, the second Firehouse 343 novel. 

According to my statistics page over at the NaNo website, I would have to write at least 2,078 words every day in order to finish on time. I can do that. Heck, I can do more than that when I set my mind to it. What I need to do is stop allowing myself to be distracted. Stop piddle-farting around on Facebook, stop chatting with friends when I'm supposed to be writing. 

So what am I going to do? I am going to buckle my arse down and get the work done. I may not actually get the novel finished in the next 19 days, and that's okay -- the goal isn't to finish. The purpose of NaNo is to challenge oneself to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I've done it before, I will do it again.