And so it comes to an end.

The last 5000 words were almost physically painful. I ran out of story before I ran out of words. In a real world setting, the difference between 48000 words and 50000 probably wouldn’t be that big a deal, but dammit I wanted 50000!

So I went back to the beginning and started editing/adding. But it felt like every time I added something, I cut another bit. Finally at 49,200 words I said ‘screw it’ and went back and gave my main character and his love interest an explicit love scene.

If I were ever to try to make this into a sellable novel I’d clip that bit out since it doesn’t really fit in with the tone of the story, but then I’m sure in the course of editing the whole thing I’d make a lot of additions and changes and who knows where the word count would end up.

But I wanted to hit 50K today. I got out of bed, started writing, and aside from 1 or 2 very brief breaks, I’ve been sitting here every since (its almost 4 now). I just NEEDED to finish!

I wish I hadn’t had to go cheap with the sex scene, though. But oh well. I need to get up and stretch. 🙂

Did a lot of chores on the way home from work, so got a late start. And I still have some things to do around the house; basically I’m trying to get the weekend free for one last big push.

Still, I broke the 40K barrier. And, amazingly, I think I have just enough story left to carry my through to 50K.

I’m really going to do this, dammit. I’m fucking amazed…

Tonight wasn’t easy. First of all, I was exhausted when I got home so I laid down for a minute and the next thing I know it was 8 pm, so I started late. And I had a lot of distractions on my mind. Some pleasant, and some not. A friend of mine is having a tough time in her relationship right now and I’m a bit worried about her.

So the words came slowly. And then suddenly I was writing a relationship between two of my characters and finally the floodgates opened.

Which makes me wonder if it’d be possible to outline a book, identify the scenes I needed, and then choose a scene to work on based on my mood or what’s on my mind?

Not a lot of words tonight, but this time it was by design. My mid-week slack-off night.

After all, Lost is on!

I had a lot of things I wanted to do tonight, and figured I wouldn’t get much writing done. Still I sat down now and then, out of force of habit. The laptop say there beckoning to me.

And I ended up getting some words down. Sweet.

Hitting 50K is going to be trickier than I thought, though. When the story was ‘broken’ it was broken because there was no way I could fit that story into 5oK. But the fixed story is rushing towards ‘The End’ a bit too rapidly. I don’t want to hit the end before I hit 50k!!

These are pretty artificial problems, of course. NaNo problems. I’ll work it out. There’s no sex in the story yet. I could layer in 10k words of pr0n easily!!! 🙂

After the weekend I’d found I’d written myself into a corner. So tonight I spent some time plot-doctoring by throwing ideas around with a friend, then sketching out a rough outline for the rest of the novel.

So not a lot of words tonight, but I accomplished more than what is shown by the word count.

After a few days of stumbling, I feel like my NaNovel is back on track. Today I wrote more than I have in any other single day so far. And my characters are doing things, and growing a bit. The world is starting to coalesce. Its feeling good again.

I couldn’t do this without the support of friends and strangers. Thank you all!

So another night when the words just refused to come. Every little thing was distracting me, then I’d sit down and just stare at the screen. Write a few words and drift off again.

I’ve decided that 8 hour meetings are not conducive to my writing. But the weekend is almost here and hopefully I’ll be able to put my nose to the grindstone and catch up.

I wanted to thank you folks who left such encouraging comments on my last post, by the way. I don’t think I would’ve even *tried* to write tonight if it hadn’t been for you.

No words today. I’m empty. Numb.