Two Full Days In

Two days of making my minimum word count and beyond!  Two days of Nano down!  Two days of typing furiously at the computer and being astonished at what comes out.  This is going pretty well so far!

Last night I did my first "Word War" with my writing buddy.  We were both behind on daily word count going into it and ahead when we came out!  It was great.  We simply set a goal of typing the most words we could manage in an hour.  Amazing what happens when you just give yourself permission to just brain dump.  I did learn that it will take me more than an hour each day to make the minimum daily word count.  Which means I simply can NOT let myself get behind.  Catching up might be nearly impossible for me.  I'm having trouble carving out the time as it is.  But I'm up for more word wars anytime!
I discovered (I'm probably late in the game discovering this) a Word War program online.  It's called Write or Die.  It's only $10 to have an at home version.  I did a quick 10 minute free online Word war and thought it was hilarious.  I put 350 words down to.  :)  I haven't purchased it yet, but I think I probably will as a reward for keeping my word count up the first week!!

I have learned that writing conversations is difficult for me.  I never considered that much because I have conversations with myself going on in my head all the time. :)  But it's a different thing putting that to paper.  In my head I can differentiate the voices and I know who is talking.  On paper I have to tell the reader who is talking and how they sound, what emotions they are trying to portray in their voices. 
As a side note, I have a character who does talk to himself out loud, it isn't supposed to make a lot of sense most of the time and he rambles and mumbles.  That is fun to write so far.

I'm learning to sort of let go.  Wrimo's online call is turning off your inner editor.  There is a tendency to read what was written and revise it.  November is not the time to do that.  I have given myself permission to suck.  This is a draft and drafts are not meant to be works of art.  I don't rewrite anything, but I have gone back when I got an idea (not to far back) to strike through what I wrote and add new.  Those words are words I earned and I don't want to loose them.  The word counter still counts them, but I don't need to keep them later on.  As a matter of fact, I haven't gone back to read the last 2 days writing.  I'm sure it is terrible, but it's a base for me.  I'll read it all in December.  I'm sure some of it will be just like new to me by then!!

I have been blessed to have supportive family and friends on this adventure.  On Monday morning I had text messages from both a great friend and my mother-in-law cheering me on and encouraging me on the Nano kick off!!  My husband has put the kids to bed two nights in a row, closed the door to the computer room, and brought me drinks while I typed away.  I also have several friends who are writing with me this year, one of whom decided on October 31 to write and had no clue what she story she wanted to tell (check out the word war bar on the side of this blog!).  This is the year we WIN!!

Oh!  One more note:  Nano changed the stats page that I complained about in the last blog posting.  It did say that the day was an "unsuccessful day" unless you had typed 1667 words that day.  I thought that was very negative, and apparently so did a lot of other people.  I saw a forum topic on it with a lot of unhappy wrimo's.  Now it says that you are "behind schedule".  Still not ideal to me, but heaps better than "unsuccessful".

Happy writing!!!