Over Nine Thousand

I pride myself on being a worker-bee type writer, and NaNoWriMo is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I thought it would be really fun, especially if I chose a project that I didn’t have very well planned. I could just see what would develop organically from a couple of characters and half-scribbled images in my mind. I was right—it’s been a blast. I’m sold. I’ll be back next year and everything.

However… the first day I wrote about ten thousand words, which is a pretty good day. On my best days, I have been able to put about thirty thousand words on paper before dinner, but there’s no rush, so I wasn't geared up to try and have any particularly awesome days this month. I’ve got all month and after ten thousand words I was sleepy, so after that first day I calmed down and just added a couple thousand words to the manuscript here and there, not really stressed about finishing well before the end of the month. Last week I was super busy and I only ended up writing a little over nine thousands words. Still, I was almost to the forty thousand mark Saturday morning.

Then, Monday, tragedy struck. It was back-up day. So, I went to back-up my novel and everyone knows where this is going so I won't even... Ugh.

I didn’t lose the whole thing, though. I’m not that pathetic, this time (I have lost whole books in the past, good job, me.) I did lose everything that I wrote last week. It’s gone forever. I was very pleased with those nine thousand words. The thought of rewriting the last few scenes was pretty awful, because they were not easy scenes to write.

First I cried, then I ate a sandwich and glared at the computer screen, like it’s even his fault. Then, I started writing, with this particularly awesome Youtube video on my mind.

So, that was yesterday and now I’m finally beyond the point where I lost last week’s work. I’m not loving some of this as much as I did the first time around. I just can’t seem to recapture the same tone, in one scene in particular… but, at least one other scene has improved considerably upon being rewritten. I guess that’s just the way it goes.

Anyway, I’m still on track to finish pretty quickly, but geez. Did I really need to learn a lesson just then?

I guess if I have to ask that, I probably didn’t learn it well enough.

I might have just shot myself in the foot.