5 Days Later

Most of those horror films start with the number 28 (months later, days later, whathaveyou), but the 28th is still a very long way away. Well, unless you have not started writing yet and that daunting 50,000 word goal hangs over your head. This year for NaNoWriMo, I decided to do it a little differently (on mere happenstance). Back in my first WriMo, I created this document with no margins and smaller spacing so it could accommodate about 1,800 words in a page and a half. My intent was, for the entire month of November, to write a page and a half every day. And I did, with the exception of the Wednesdays spent labouring in the 5th floor lounge of Sage Laboratories which had a few extra thrown in there for good measure. It was an eye opening month to say the least, and since then that single document has spawned countless offspring, one of which I began using anew this month. Total now, in the past three and a half years since telling myself that I could write a book every damn year I wanted, I have amassed a surprising (to me, at least) 1,400,000 words. Coming to this November, when life is in the midst of doing whatever it wants without a care for the time to do it, I was nervous that I might not be able to hold up my end of the bargain and produce my 50k. And then I told it no. No. NO! I am free to do as I please and at the moment I please to write a book. (part of one at that...)

So when the 1st of November came around I decided to start off on the right (write) foot and push that 1.5 pages to 2, carrying that through the weekend so I would have a little buffer for the week when the word count fell apart. That 2,300 word beginning to this magical journey turned into Saturday, then Sunday of 2 pages a piece. [for perspective, each of these pages is about 3~4 print size, depending on how much dialogue I use] Then Monday came and I found that I felt I was selling short by stopping at the 1.5, so I added another half. Now it is Tuesday evening and I just finished that extra half because why not? It is only day five, and if I could somehow convince myself it was a good idea to do this all again, to whoever may be reading this and pointedly not writing a novel this month, there is plenty of time left. I know (of) people writing a million words this month. A million! That is more than 30k every day. If they can do it, I am certain you can do it in the remaining 25 day in this year's November.

Coming at you from 11,643 words,

JSP