NaNoWriMo Update

Those of you keeping score at home^* have noticed those progress bars to the right haven't moved much in the last week--and actually not at all for a few days. Yup. Whoops.

I hit a pothole, and while NaNoWriMo is all about pushing yourself, to keep on writing and not bother with things like fact checking or editing, etc. until you have a first draft, I'd reached a point that without some research, I couldn't progress at all. So I took the time to do the research, which was helpful, but destroyed the 3 or 4 ideas to keep the plot moving forward. I came up with 2 real solid plans from the research though, but couldn't figure out how to incorporate them into my story without rewriting at least half of it (and aging my 10 year old protagonist by 3-5 years, which would make a fairly significant change in how he acts, thinks, and talks--and I really wasn't in the mood for that).

So I spent another day and a half just stuck there. Which was so, so, not fun at all. Not even thinking about my word count, just that I'd lost momentum--and was having a pretty fun time writing daily.

Thankfully, a tangential point of my research, one that promised no potential plotlines at all, turned out to be my savior. I just had to be desperate enough to see it. I really can't give a satisfactory explanation for it without summarizing my whole story up to this point and through the end--and I'm one of those writers that can't do that. The instant I tell someone my plot, it's DOA.

Today's main writing session was cut brief by Real Life™--dentist appointments, getting a new cell phone, trying to figure out how to use the new cell phone, etc. (I may relate the embarrassing events leading up to the new phone tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to the humble pie)--and was encumbered by all this inertia built up over the weekend. But towards the end, I think I could tell I was reaching a turning point.

Let's hope I did...am about 5K behind now. :)

^* Wow, really, you are? And I thought I needed to get a life.