November 21

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 17,589
• Today’s word count: 435
• Thoughts: I would love, love, love to have some four figure writing days. I know I’m capable of it. I’m just incredibly easily distracted. At least today I can point my finger at one thing in particular distracting me. It was Hive. The book/writing community on Twitter was in the middle of a mass migration to the Hive social media app today and I joined in the fun. I created an account and spent way too much time reconnecting with people and goofing around on the app. It was fun, but it really bit a chunk out of my writing time. To make it worse, the app is only available on phones so I couldn’t smoothly switch windows on my PC and jump from writing to social media shenanigans.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I’m going outside. It’s really happening. The forecast says our temperatures will get up into the 50s. I’ve been craving a walk so I think I have to go while I have a chance. After that, I should be ready to get back to writing. Let’s just hope there isn’t another hot new social media I need to join if I want to keep up with my writing friends.

November 22

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 18,027
• Today’s word count: 438
• Thoughts: Well, I wrote more than yesterday. That’s something. I can keep making incremental progress like this for a long time before it gets to be physically impossible, but I really, really want to get some solid days with mid to high thousands of words to really give myself a fighting chance of winning NaNoWriMo.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I wonder if I can manage a 5k day the day before Thanksgiving. It’ll be tough, but I highly doubt I’ll be able to manage it on Thursday or Friday of this week so if it is going to happen, it needs to be tomorrow.

November 23

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 20,211
• Today’s word count: 2,188
• Thoughts: I was on track to reach my goals until lunch time. I’m not mad about it though. Writing over 2k in a day is still an accomplishment. Everything was on track in the morning. That’s when almost all the writing happened. Then I took a spur of the moment errands run with my best friend and when I got back all of my writing mojo was used up. I guess I should have kept going to coast on the momentum.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I wonder if I should try again. It can’t hurt, can it? Maybe I’ll manage to write 5k. I’d be pretty happy even if I could stretch to reach 3k. It’ll be a struggle since Thanksgiving is always chaotic.

November 24

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 20,252
• Today’s word count: 41
• Thoughts: As soon as I woke up today I could tell this wasn’t going to be my day. I didn’t have any focus. I let it be without much of a fight. Today was Thanksgiving, after all. I knew I was going to get distracted sooner or later and I did get completely distracted. I never got my focus back.
• Tomorrow’s goal: I’m doing a tiny bit of Black Friday shopping. It’s pretty much a tradition now to go to a local used game shop and just go nuts. Hopefully I’ll be ready to write when I get back home.

November 25

No writing progress

Today didn’t go as planned writing-wise. It was a good day overall, but it wasn’t right for writing. Oh well. I’ll try again tomorrow.

November 26

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count: 20,631
• Today’s word count: 379
• Thoughts: I wrote today so that’s better than yesterday, but I didn’t write nearly enough for this time of NaNoWriMo. It really wasn’t enough considering how far behind I am. I have a lot of catching up to do and I don’t know how I’m going to get myself to focus enough to make it happen. It looks like I might not win NaNoWriMo this year and that feels awful. I won’t give up yet. It isn’t midnight on the 30th just yet. There’s still time.
• Tomorrow’s goal: More writing, I hope. I want to write a lot more. I’d love to reach 10k for tomorrow just to take the burden off the last day or two a bit more. I don’t know how feasible that is, but I have to try.

November 27

• Project: The Dreams
• Total word count:22,357
• Today’s word count: 1,726
• Thoughts: I would be so proud of this word count at almost any other point in the year. Even earlier in NaNoWriMo I would be thrilled with it. At the end of the month, I’m still feeling stressed out even with a word count like this. All of my less than great days have come home to roost. This happens to me every year. At the end of NaNoWriMo I’m left scrambling to write 10k words or more for multiple days if I have any hope at all of winning. I’ve managed it before on many occasions. This year, I’m not so sure I have it in me to do it. I wanted to pull off 10k today to take the pressure off the week ahead. I didn’t even come close. I don’t know how I’ll pull it off mid-week if I couldn’t manage it on a Sunday.
• Tomorrow’s goal: More writing, I hope. I have high hopes but I’m trying to keep my expectations more grounded.There is a very real possibility I won’t win NaNoWriMo this time.