The best laid plans....

... sometimes go awry...

But NOT in this case!!

I tell you, my friends, I was worried there at the start. It got a wee bit rough.

First of all, I was supposed to be off on November 1. Can you say, Perfect? I was going to write ALL DAY.

Then the boss called, asking if I could work on Thursday instead of Wednesday.

After the wailing and gnashing of teeth subsided, I cheerily said "Of course!"

She responded, "Great! By the way, it involves a trip to Dallas. We leave at 7 AM and we won't be done until 5:00"

More wailing. More gnashing.

SO. For the first full day of NaNo, starting at 5:30 in the AM, I was stuck in traffic, in training, stuck in MORE traffic, and then collapsing into my bed in 9:00 PM, too tired to write a single word.

I worked the next day, too. I was so tired, I forgot my notebook. Then, my coworker, who is also doing NaNo, told me she was already at 10,000 words.

My confidence took a nosedive, and I started to give up. There was no WAY I was catching up at that point. How could I POSSIBLY write TWO books with such a rough start?

Then I realized something very, very important: the joy shouldn't lie in the completion, but the writing itself. If I allowed myself to get bogged down in the numbers, I wouldn't enjoy the writing. And if I didn't enjoy the writing... why was I doing this to myself?

So, Saturday morning, when I was called to work at 9 AM for a meeting, I decided to spend the time between then and my shift (I didn't clock in until 1:00 PM) writing.

Guess what? I enjoyed it.

I didn't write a lot. Only about 1300 words, and it was already day 3. But I didn't care. I simply enjoyed the creative flow.

I did the same thing the next few days - writing in my notebook when I could at work, and not sweating it the rest of the time.

Well, friends, today is my day off, and I've been a writing fool. I'm nowhere near caught up, even for ONE novel, but I'm on the write track... (I had to do it once :-P).

Win or lose, I'm still gonna give it my best shot!


Laterz.


Post Script: My current word count is 6300 words. Not bad for a latecomer ;-)