Week three is over now and we should all be getting much further along in our stories. How is it going? Are you learning more about your characters and how they would react in the different situations you throw them into? (Please, let me know in the comments below.)
I hit the 50,000 word mark on the 15th, and, for me, that was just a little over half-way through my novel. My goal is to complete the first draft of my novel by November 30th. My novel should be somewhere between 85,000 and 95,000 words long when it's complete.
But there's a problem. My writing is slowing down. I'm not bored with my story. I still love the story and the characters, and I'm still excited about where the story is going. But I am bored of writing the story.
In order to fit writing time into my day, I have started writing in a notebook while I am on the two buses I take to get my children to their schools and again on those two buses on my way home. This "school run" happens twice a day. Add in some time walking between schools and walking to and from the bus stops and these trips take me two hours each time. So I spend two hours in the morning taking my kids to school and then going home again, and then I spend another two hours picking them up from school and going home again. If you take out the walking times, I spend about 3 hours a day on buses. And now I spend that time writing.
Not only am I starting to get pain in my hand because it's starting to cramp up from all the writing I am doing, but I miss chatting with the people I have gotten to know on the bus journeys. Add to that the fact that typing up, in the evening, everything I write in notebooks during the day, and my evening becomes mind-numbingly boring.
So I am finding myself making excuses to not write as much. I've already reached the 50,000 NaNoWriMo goal, so it has become one excuse I use, despite the fact that I know it's not enough to complete my book. "I'm tired" is frequent excuse I use, which, though true, is not a good enough reason to write less. The other excuse I use is that I don't have time. I've decided to only allow myself that excuse for the typing part of my writing and not the notebook writing and only if I don't then spend any time watching television or on Facebook, etc. It's only a valid excuse if I really am busy doing doing other necessary things all day.
So what excuses have you come up with during NaNoWriMo for not spending enough time writing? Are they legitimate? I'd love to hear them.
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