crumpled notes: NaNoWriMo Week 3
Some flowers between work and the gym (Nov, 2010)
Last week was pretty full on, and NaNoWriMo got pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, mainly because I was too exhausted at the end of each day.
Most of the complication sprung from work, significantly increased workload, and inevitable associated stressing (part of the creative process?). Add to the mix two after work gym sessions, the final acting class, two late nights at the office, and a before-work breakfast, and my timetable was pretty chockers. The icing on the cake was the raging cold that kicked in on Thursday. As a result, I spent my Saturday mooching around the house, watching the last episodes of Bionic Woman (so much potential), and transferring an Astro Boy patch from a baggy t-shirt onto a singlet I love.
Also went to Northern Brisbane Rollers roller-derby bout with friends on Saturday night, grand final between Diner Mite Dolls and love Rockettes. Dead Meat (yellow) and Annabel Lecter (pink) face-off (20 Nov 2010)So Sunday was really the only day I dedicated to NaNoWriMo. Luckily, on Sunday I was less than a day below my word count, so it really wasn’t difficult to get back on track. I set a goal to reach 40,000 words (inspired in part by Ghostwolfe, who has just hit the big 50,000!). I spent an early morning adding a good couple of thousand words onto my word count. I used a necessary trip to the city as an opportunity for a change of scenery, ending up at the specialty chocolate shop in Queens Plaza, right next to Alana Hill. A latte, chilli bomb, and raspberry bomb later and I was another couple of thousand words down. Back home, the remaining several thousand appeared over several, smaller writing stints. Mission Accomplished!
Last night I also donated to the Office of Letters and Light. I have had enormous fun doing NaNoWriMo so far, and I’m continually impressed by the quality of the website, and the effort put in by OLL staff to interact with the NaNo community. I’m also impressed with ANZ bank. They called me within ten minutes of the transaction to confirm that it was legitimate. Wow. my profile pic now has a donor halo, very fetching!
Doing so much writing in one day meant I wrote a number of scenes with different pacing. In particular contrast are two scenes, one from the point of view of a miserable man who thinks and feels in slow-motion, and one with the murderer who is a continual mix of fear and agitation. Doing one scene after the other made me realise that when I’m writing sad stuff, my typing speed decreases significantly. On the other hand, the agitated scene just flew onto the page, like I could hardly type fast enough to keep up! Perhaps this could be a strategy for dealing with slow writing days; ditch the moody stuff and write a chase scene instead!
The NaNoWriMo daily progress graph below shows my current progress: