NaNoWriMo Day 11. 13,728 words or, Write Everywhere, All the Time

It’s Day 11 of NaNoWriMo and although I’m in the midst of one of the busiest times at my day job and in my semester, I’ve still managed to crank out over 13,000 words so far. What my main character is up to I’m still not sure but I’ll let her do what she wants and hope it all turns out.  Currently there are two main story lines going: some formative event(s) from the main character’s past and what is apparently either a story about a woman going slowly mad or more likely, some kind of haunting (?).  Also, yellow roses appear to be a big problem for her. This is the first time in a while that I’ve written with a female protagonist throughout. It feels odd but as she’s different from me, it’s interesting to find out how she feels/thinks/acts. As to the writing process itself, it’s very difficult (impossible?) for me to find periods of concentrated writing so, instead, I’ve been writing whenever and wherever I can. I just wrote 300 words on my lunch break at work – not much but it introduced an important plot point. Last night, I was stuck on a NJ Transit train that was 30 minutes late pulling in to Penn Station and that gave me well over an hour of writing time. I’ve never been precious about where I write although, of course, I prefer my desk at home. I write on a small pad of paper when I don’t have my laptop with me and on my laptop when I have it. I have a couple of long flights coming up and those are always good for getting writing done. I don’t understand writers who need a specific “atmosphere” to write – I’m just too busy to be so precious about my writing space. As long as I have my iPod and a few spare minutes, I’ll be writing. However, there is one aspect of my life that suffers during NaNoWriMo and that’s my daily poems.  I wrote a short poem today but otherwise, I’m not able to stick to my daily schedule. I’m hoping to be at 25,000 this weekend  in anticipation of some major academic work that needs to get done over the next four weeks. Meanwhile, what IS it about yellow roses?

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