NaNoWriMo 17 + 18 + 19

I decided to dedicate most of Sunday the 17th to making progress on my novel and that was apparently a mistake. I had a hard time concentrating, and I kept getting distracted and watching Supernatural with my fiance. I think part of what contributed to my trouble with writing was wearing clothes that weren't terribly comfortable. Note to self: Dressing in your Sunday best doesn't seem to yield the most productive results while sitting on the couch writing.

Monday went considerably better. I woke up feeling really sick, so I had to take the day off from work. While I was at home, I got both World of Warcraft valor capping on my hunter done AND I wrote 3000 words! I think that’s the best I've ever done in terms of words on a given day. I feel like I've found the key to concentrating and driving myself into a focused trance. I managed to get myself a day ahead which felt awesome.

Seriously, this dino is a mofo.

Yesterday, I had a bit less luck but I had considerably less writing time. Work was really busy, so I couldn't really find any time to write during a break or something before leaving. I then had to run daily tasks then come home and attempt to relax for a bit. I got into a looking for raid group on my hunter that end up taking 2 hours to complete with about 1 hour being spent on us wiping continually on Thok the Bloodthirsty. After that was over, I was still very tired like I had been the rest of the day, of course, but I made myself at least pump out 900 words so that I don’t start falling behind my word count again or relying too heavily on having padding.

On a somewhat related note, I finally invested in Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle. A little bit of history is needed here. I first discovered Holly Lisle while doing my first real writing attempts in high school. Her blog, loaded up through my poor dial up internet connection, helped to teach me the hard truth that becoming a published author would be difficult. However, she also taught me that pursuing that dream would be considerably rewarding. As a poor high school student, I could not buy any of her books at the time as much as I wanted them. Flashing forward to now, I can much more easily afford her works. Especially with the Mugging the Muse book updated to talk about self publishing now and only costing 99 cents as an ebook, I think this book is an incredible steal even though I’m not that deep into it. Holly has a wonderfully straightforward writing style, and the journaling exercises so far have been really helping me and inspiring me as I go through NaNoWriMo. For less than the cost of a vending machine drink, I definitely recommend gleaning some writing wisdom from this book.