After NaNo

So after the sheer oddity of the weirdness that was NaNoWriMo and the start of the longest bit of writing I've ever managed, I'm trudging a bit. I'm not particularly worried - I had a whole week during November where I didn't write a word, and although it wasn't ideal I still got 50K done before midnight struck at the end of the month. But it's a bit sad to look back at my November spreadsheet and see that on the days I was writing, I was averaging between 2 and 5K per day. Since I hit that 50K my biggest daily word count has been 725. Today was 703.

Still, the story's there. I had a couple of days where the next scene just wouldn't come - not because I didn't know what would happen, but because the new characters refused to make themselves known to me. So I sat it out, read a bit, wrote a scene from elsewhere, tried some collaging, and eventually went over to http://elouai.com/doll-makers/new-dollmaker.php and spent ages going through that trying to picture one of them. Eventually she fell into place, and the shop dummies that were standing in place of my characters reluctantly gave up their seats. It's still not quite right, but I've got through that bit and it's a start.

I know part of the reason I'm not writing as much now is that I'm not setting goals. During NaNo I stuck with a timer, 15 minutes at a time for the most part, and it worked. I wrote. For some reason I'm reluctant to continue that, but it means that my writing's been a bit here and a bit there, a couple of lines at a time, which isn't really that great for focus. Of course it doesn't help that I've been feeling rubbishy, but still, I've been sat at the computer, and there's no real reason for me not to write, so it feels odd not to be throwing myself into it. I want to finish this story; there's still so much to tell, but at the moment I'm just having to put one foot in front of the other. I guess I'm just working with what I can see in the headlights.

I'm actually looking forward to editing this, which is a first. Because I've written it with basically no outline, making very few notes along the way, I'm itching to get back to the beginning and just sort it out. I don't want to do that until I reach the end though - I need to carry on the momentum without looking back for the most part. Streamlining, editing, that's supposed to come later.

I think tomorrow I might try the timer again. I won't force it; I've heard enough warnings about how writing when you're not feeling it really isn't worth it. But if I can write for 15 minutes, I can hit 500 words. If I do it twice, that's 1K I didn't have before. That's nothing. Half an hour in the day. Even if I am feeling under the weather. Dainara would have no sympathy for me.