October 31

No writing progress

I could have written, but I made a choice to save up my writing energy for midnight. I took a walk at lunchtime and it was really nice. I also too an evening nap which is usually a bad idea, but the plan was to wake up at midnight and write so I think it’s not the worst idea now. Hopefully I’ll have a good start to NaNoWriMo tomorrow.

November 1

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 8,946
• Today’s word count: 460
• Thoughts: Things were looking up at first. After taking a late evening nap, I woke up at midnight and wrote about 200 words. Then I was running out of steam and went back to sleep. After I woke up I only managed to write another 250 words or so over the course of the day. I was so frustrated! I tried so hard and I feel like the amount I wrote doesn’t reflect that. I’ll just have to keep trying.
• Tomorrow’s goal: More sleep and more writing. I’ve been feeling the results of my lack of sleep for a few weeks now and everything I’ve been trying to improve the quality and length of my sleeps hasn’t been working. It sucks to have it hit me so hard right now out of all times, but I hope I can turn things around before the whole month is wasted on futile sleep struggles.

November 2

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 9,961
• Today’s word count: 1,015
• Thoughts: Today somehow turned out to be more productive than yesterday. This is shocking because I was awake at 4 a.m. with a migraine and spent from then until about noon in a migraine medication induced haze. I was ready to be incredibly disappointed, but somehow I turned it around. I really don’t know how. Maybe it was just because I actually took care of the problem that was standing in my way and that freed me up to get things done once it was better.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I’m hoping I feel better and can have an even more productive day. I know I’m pushing myself a bit by ramping things up so quickly, but it is NaNoWriMo and it’s mostly my fault for not finding more motivation before the start of November to get myself back to where I need to be stamina-wise to handle this sort of event.

November 3

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 10,086
• Today’s word count: 125
• Thoughts: Ugh. Today was not my day. I had a decent time overall, but I was not in a focused state of mind. I tried more than once to get myself back on track. Nothing worked. I was just scattered. Every time I started writing my mind just wandered. Sometimes it wandered to other parts of the story and then wandered off completely before I could reorient myself and start writing from that point instead. It was chaotic and frustrating.
• Tomorrow’s goal: Errands are happening in the morning, as usual for a Friday. Hopefully there will be plenty of time to focus on writing later in the day.

November 4

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 10,425
• Today’s word count: 339
• Thoughts: Today was better than yesterday, but I’m still not writing at the level I need to be for NaNoWriMo. I’m trying not to be discouraged. There’s plenty of time left in the month and I know I am capable of bursts of sudden creativity and the pressure of the month of November can make me do some pretty impressive things. There’s more than enough time to get caught up or close to it.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I don’t know what to expect. I’m helping a friend with her storage unit in the morning. It’s hard to guess what the rest of the day will hold.

November 5

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 10,952
• Today’s word count: 527
• Thoughts: Once again, today was a bit better than yesterday. I’m just struggling to get into the zone. So much time is being wasted trying to write and feeling my focus slip through my fingers time and time again is discouraging. I need to figure out where my focus is early on and hold onto it if I’m going to get past this word count range.
• Tomorrow’s goal: Have a better day of writing. It’s the elusive, rare, and exclusive 25 hour day. We only get one of these a year and I’m so glad it’s during NaNoWriMo. I just don’t want it to go to waste.

November 6

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 11,239
• Today’s word count: 287
• Thoughts: This just wasn’t my day. I was hoping to get some extra sleep. I was hoping I’d have energy and time in some sort of magical convergence brought about by the rare and elusive 25 hour day. I’m pretty sure I just ended up with jet lag? I woke up too early. I kept feeling lost. I was hungry at weird times. I felt like going to bed way too early. These sort of things bothered me a lot less when it was routine for me to be awake until 1 or 2 in the morning. This year it just made everything I don’t like about my current routine worse. Things have to change.
• Tomorrow’s goal: Get back on track. I need to get back to writing and sleeping like it is actually NaNoWriMo. It might be easier said than done, but I won’t know if I can do it until I give it a try.