The Ups and Downs

I decided on Sunday to write a blog about my writing day to encourage you regardless of whether you were doing well or doing poorly. I didn’t expected that I’d have one day of each!

I planned my NaNo writing for Monday through Friday, like a regular job. I need to get better at treating my writing like a regular job anyway, so now that I’m moved and half unpacked, it seemed like a good time to get a solid routine going. There are 21 weekdays in November, so that is 2381 words a day to hit the 50,000 mark by the end of November. I came home from a Halloween party at midnight on Saturday, so from 12:00 to 12:04am, while my husband brushed his teeth, I wrote 68 words. It felt great to start at the exact moment I was able to!

Sunday I thought about my book, and probably would’ve written something if I’d had nothing going on, but it was a busy day so I relaxed. Monday, my day looked like this:

5:30am – groaned when I looked at the clock; (un)fortunately I was up early enough to get a run in before the work day began; darn, I mean Yay!

5:45am – finally got up, went for a run, took a shower, got dressed

8:15am – made the bed, emptied the dishwasher (thank you FlyLady!), ate a high-protein breakfast, checked email, read NaNo email, got sidetracked into checking out a new book on Amazon

9:00am – saw the Brita pitcher I’d unpacked earlier, decided I needed quick access to cold water for the rest of the month, found the box with the filters, washed the pitcher, looked through other things in the box, forced myself not to unpack anything else

9:55am – Started writing! YAY!

11:10am – phone rang, wrong number, good time to check email, brought some cheese and crackers into the office

11:25am – writing again

12:15pm – doorbell, mailman looking for someone else, resisted checking email!

12:17pm – back to writing

12:35pm – finished Chapter 1 scene 1, handwritten, started typing

1:45pm – finished typing Chapter 1 scene 1 (1383 words), tiny bit of editing/adding, printed the scene and put in 3-ring binder (bummer, my 3-hole punch is too small for the larger Australian paper, worry about it later), checked email, took a 30-min lunch/rest

2:30pm – start writing – wait, another phone call

2:45pm – writing again

3:10pm – phone call – we now have tickets to see WICKED with our friends next month! Yay!

3:12pm – back to writing

4:30pm – finished chapter 1 scene 2, handwritten so started typing

5:30pm – finished typing – whew! printed the scene, put in binder, updated NaNo site with my word count total (2719 words)

REALLY great day! I was so pleased! Not only did I get a good start on my book, but I made my goal plus another 338 words! I was quite looking forward to Tuesday…which turned out to be a much different day.

6:30am – woke up, didn’t feel that great

7:50am – had to get up and take a shower or hate myself, chose the former

9:00am – got to office an hour earlier than yesterday! Going to be a great day!

10:10am – finally stopped screwing around in email and on the Internet and got writing

10:30am – couldn’t concentrate, checked email

11:00am – took a deep breath and went back to writing

11:15am – created a Christmas wish list on Amazon, printed it for my husband

12:00pm – more deep breathing, don’t worry, you have the whole day in front of you, emailed writer friends to ask for encouragement, answered every single email they wrote throughout the day

Without going into graphic detail, I managed to mangle the entire rest of my day. Granted, I still wasn’t feeling all that great. And it was Melbourne Cup Day so I had the TV on mute most of the day except during the 10 races. (It’s practically an Australian holiday. No way was I going to miss it!) The sad news is I got only a bit over 100 words written on Tuesday. But at 3:30 I decided to at least get things done that otherwise would have to be done today.

Well, that recaps my first couple days. How did yours go? Let’s make a plan to try to find our strengths and weaknesses this month so we can really get some solid personal writing routines down. Remember, a mere four weeks after NaNo ends, we need to have our 2010 goals ready!

So here’s hoping today goes better! For all of us! If you want to watch my progress this month, I’m tracking it on my NaNoWriMo page and on the would count graphic on our About page.