The Third Week!!

According to the forums, which I haunt regularly these days as if I have nothing else to do, say that week 2 is the hardest one.  They way I understand it the first week is like a honeymoon; your are all set to write and can't wait to see what the future holds, everything is rosy.  Week 2 is when you figure out that being married is hard work; your writing has become harder to schedule and your story has gone where you didn't expect it to and it worries you. Week 3 is when you get yourself back on track and it starts to feel better and kind of normal, like you meant for it to happen like that. Week 4 is the sprint to the finish line.

Today we are exactly halfway through the month.  If you aren't halfway done writing by the days end, you are running behind.  It's one of those days where you can measure your progress.  Some people can also say that they are halfway through with their novel.  I thought that I was going to be one of those people.  They way I had it planned in my head (because I never got it fully written out on paper) I would be turning a corner into the third section of my story.  Surprisingly, I can see the corner from here, but I'm not close enough to it to make the turn yet, without running into an obstacle.  And I'm fine with that.  

50,000 words is simply the target for November.  It doesnt' have to define my novel and put it in a box that is only 50,000 words big.  I'm hopeful that the words will tumble over the top of the box.  Many of them will be edited out and thrown away anyway. 

Allen and I challenged each other to race from 25,000 to 30,000 by midnight (last night).  The last to reach the deadline owed the other coffee one morning this week.  This is a typical tortoise and the hare story.  I chugged along all day (and talked smack to Allen during the coarse of it).  At 29,500 words, I have family obligations that I was glad to stop writing for.  In hindsight, I could have asked my husband for a few more minutes.  I was on a roll and only had 2 paragraphs more to write (more or less) to win.  I didn't though.  I thought about the finish line at midnight and knew that Allen had things to do during the day as well.  And I assumed I would be able to plunk out those last few words after dinner and still cross the finish line first.   Guess what...  he beat me.  And I'm glad!!!  I'm excited to have coffee with my friend this week.  We have seen very little of each other this month.  I'm happy that his word count pushed to 30k (and mine is so close).  I'm glad that I was able to tangent off for a whole day on a character whose back story turned out to be sort of important.  Almost 5000 words have been written, just to get me to the bridge so I can go to the next island.

I'm thankful for the writing time I got this weekend.  I won't have that next weekend and I'm already mourning that.  Now, I'll just concentrate on keeping my word count up each day and I'll finish well ahead of time.  Week 3!!  It's too late to turn back now. I'm 3/5 of the way there!!! 

Happy writing!!