The final week of NaNoWriMo has seen a bit of a slow-down. I wrote 5,257 words this week, with only one day above 1,000 and none above 1,667. My daily average is 751 words.

My total is now 85,825/1,000,000, or 8.5% for the One Million Words challenge.

For NaNoWriMo, I’ve written 30,862/50,000 words, or 61.7%.

Day by day summary

Monday: 775 words

Tuesday: 608 words

Wednesday: 1205 words

Thursday: 543 words

Friday: 529 words

Saturday: 737 words

Sunday: 860 words.

Analysis

I am tired. It’s been a bit of a marathon getting this far for NaNoWriMo, and even though I haven’t won (as I write this, it is in fact nearly 9pm on Monday 30th November) I have written a lot more than I might have otherwise. ANd I’ve worked on one story that whole time, which I haven’t done since the start of this challenge.

I think writing on one story, and in the last week without much idea of where it was going, is tiring. Next week I plan on taking a few days off from the story to give myself a break – I’ll write something else instead. But also this week I’ve faced various obstructions from real life. Clogged toilets, a job opportunity missed, a car battery that finally gave up the ghost… at midnight on Friday night.

I’ve got a basic idea for the chapter I’m working on now. Chapter 4. I started writing it a couple of days ago, but it’s not got far yet. Nothing much has happened. Even though I have a rough idea of what I want to happen, it’s not quite there yet. There are two plot elements I’m working with: the crew has to fight bandits, and there is a character who knows more about my protagonist than they should. The latter was a challenge or prompt I found online, and I thought it would be a good element to add a different dimension to the story. But the character I had in mind is proving not to be suitable after all. And in general there’s a lot about the story I’m not happy with.

I have barely read anything this week, and I think it shows. The only day I picked up a book was Tuesday. Most of the week I’ve been up until midnight or later, either writing or trying to jump start my car, and that leaves no time for reading at bed time.

I think with November now over, almost, it’s time in the next week to just take a break from this big push and try something a bit different for a while – and give myself time to work out where I’m going wrong and take a second run at chapter 4.