Week one of Nanowrimo

Disclaimer: This blog was written after working on my novel, meaning it might not make too much sense at times, and there may be grammatical errors. *grins*

Well, as I discussed in last week's blog, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, which for those who haven't heard about it is a 50,000 word adventure to the depths of a writers imagination (meaning you write 50,000 words in one month). My journey thus far with Nano has been splendid. I've learned a lot about myself that I hadn't really known in previous years. Including the fact that I don't have to always be the underdog that catches up at the end. I can be on top of my writing the whole month long... or at least so far. *smiles* As of writing this blog, I'm 12,050 words in, and not planning on slowing up.

In the past, I did more slacking, at least this far in, and would always have to play catch up toward later in the month. Now I'm ahead of the game and wanting to reach a ridiculous amount of fairly clean pages. I've gone a little too much on the side of letting my fingers fly over the keyboard before that I'd keep in some spots that I knew probably would be edited out, which is a good thing to do to make the word count, but this year I've allowed myself to go back and correct some errors, especially after one year of going back into the novel to edit and scratching my head at a typo that I couldn't figure out what should have been there. Yikes! I ended up having to just delete that sentence when it had been pretty good except for that mysterious word. I love editing, but if I could take a little more time with the first draft, I think I wouldn't have to do so much!

I also find that with my current speed, it's easier to break through rough patches. So far I've gotten through two sticky scenes, one of which turned into my favorite as of now. This year has been a first since I have been kind of pantsing since I had a very, very rough outline, which was more of an idea than outline. And that idea has managed to change on me, for the good, mind you, but still... It's a wee bit exciting!

Anyways, I want to hear from you! How are you doing with your word counts? Has your journey been going well? What are you learning about yourself and your writing? =) Let me know!