Progress… and constructive procrastination, maybe.

[Please just ignore my progressively less eloquent post titles… I can’t even name my novel. I need help.]

It’s the sixth day of NaNoWriMo, and my word count is at 8,676 right now, which is a good number… my goal for today is 10,002 (at least), so I should be fine.

Yesterday, I discovered that it is within my capacity to write 1,000 words in only 30 minutes, which is awesome but is also sort of unfortunate, because the ‘I don’t have enough time’ excuse won’t work anymore and I’ll be forced to keep writing instead of scrolling through tumblr for ten hours. But if you think about it, I could technically write almost an entire novel in a day (assuming I didn’t take any breaks at all, which isn’t healthy or plausible, really) and that’s pretty cool to think about.

How’s my novel going? Well…

It’s sort of limping along, and neither my novel nor I are particularly sure where we’re going with this, but we hope it’ll lead somewhere. My main characters are acting up and refusing to adhere to the kind of personalities I had originally assigned for them, I randomly decided to turn the story into a quest to redeem my MC’s brother who has suddenly been accused of multiple murders because of a nasty coincidence, and four people have already died in a pretty horrible way.

So… it’s going well, I guess?

This is probably the most badly-written novel I’ve ever written, but I’m learning to just embrace how terrible it is. In the past, I never really understood what people meant by the ‘inner editor’, but this year I’m painfully aware of it. My way of coping is just by leaving bolded, caps-locked notes of ‘[DEAR NASIM: CHANGE THIS]‘ so that I remember just how bad it is when I do get around to editing it after November.

Things that have been wonderfully useful this week: NaNo Pep Talks and Write or Die (honestly, I’m going to use Write or Die for homework when I start studying again).

THINGS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT (Unless you’re procrastinating, in which case: go back to writing your novel immediately! or just procrastinate with these, I honestly won’t mind… I mean, seriously, I’m procrastinating by writing this blog post):

• Constellations, my Chronicles of Narnia fanfic, which is new on Fanfiction.net. Things never happen the same way twice. Two nights under the sky with one thousand three hundred and forty two years (or three) in between. It’s a one-shot, so it doesn’t take that much procrastination!
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• Also, I got a chance to write a guest blog post for Lyn the Thorne-Alder here (or here, if you’re like me and your computer blocks LJ) titled What I learned from the years I did NaNoWrimo (and from the years I didn’t). If you’re like me and feel like you need confidence because this year, suddenly nothing works for you, you may find it a bit encouraging.
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• And if you happen to read Spanish… my friend Marcelo Alvarenga just wrote an epic post on the best classic movie adaptations. Check it out and leave a comment!

Now, how’s your novel going? Are you as confused about what’s happening to your plot as I am?