Camp NaNoWriMo – Go Big – Day 12

Miss me?

It’s been a rough couple of days. I got so busy writing on Night 10 that I didn’t even have a chance to blog, so that one’s on me. I was a very bad boy. But I didn’t deserve the suffering of Days 11 and 12.

Day 11 was a family day out so they wouldn’t murder me in my sleep for being grouchy author man during the entire month of July. By the time we returned from our outing I was feeling too crappy to do any writing and ended the evening curled up and waiting to die. Day 12 has been much the same – I felt a little better this morning, descended into vile illness again, then resurfaced long enough to grill some pizzas before collapsing back into the illness.

It really doesn’t help that the current WIP is mostly about people suffering from all manner of infestations and diseases. Nothing like being reminded of what puking sounds like when you’re about to urp up your dinner yourself.

If you haven’t guessed, this post is about the kind of crap life throws in your face when you’re staring down a deadline. The only one in the universe who cares about your project is you, which means sometimes the universe is going to fuck you over on the way to your goal.

DAY TWELVE: Write Through the Pain

I’m not going to lie. I really did not want to write today. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out things I could do to avoid writing, which is a sure sign that I’m about to fall off the writing wagon. Once I realized that I was making up reasons why I couldn’t write, I was able to get over the hump and just write.

I didn’t write as much as I normally do – I only hit 3.5k words today, which is a bad weekend word count for me. I know I have a big work week coming up, which is going to make binge writing difficult. That means that instead of hitting my weekend goal of 12k words (halfway through the second novella), I only made it to 9.5k words. For those keeping track at home, that’s an average word count for a writing day during the week.

I’m a whole day behind.

Tomorrow

All the words must be written tomorrow, no matter what. Back on Day 9 I mentioned that I needed to get through the first draft of Novella #2 in the next five days.  That means I’d need to write about for days 13 and 14, and I don’t think that’s reasonable.

Fortunately, I got way out ahead on Novella #1, which means I actually do have enough time to finish this even if the first draft spills over into day 15 or 16. I won’t be happy about it, because it will jeopardize a secret bonus goal I’ve been working toward, but we’ll just have to see what happens.

The short-term goal for tomorrow is to try and make up some lost time. If I can get to 5k words I’ll call it a win, but I’d really rather hit 7.5k. Aim high!

Looking forward

My editor’s hip deep in Novella #1, so that part’s looking good. If I want to release both Novellas before the end of this month, I’m going to have to get serious about a cover very quickly. Fortunately, there’s a fast and easy way to get good covers without going broke, so we’ll be discussing that in the next few days.

For now, I’m going to crawl into bed and hope whatever the hell this illness is passes so I can get back on top of my game.