NaNoWriMo--Day Twenty, and...Cyanide, Anyone?

As you will notice, I now have a spiff new NaNoWriMo word war widget in the upper left corner of my screen.  WrytingBear is my writing buddy who threw down the gauntlet earlier this week when he realised I was suddenly beginning to catch up to his word count. He may have thrown it down, I simply chose to write about it.  "It's ON baby, like mascara on Prince."  That's what I told him.

About an hour ago, as you can see from the real time widget, I hit my 40,000 word mark.  My original plan was to push through to 70,000 words.  I'd still like to see that happen, but I've been so tired lately, that I'm afraid my first instinct will be to just stop when I hit 50,000 and leave it at that.  I can't do that--I've already got folks waiting on the mss.

During this week when I was churning out word after word, and thus, kicking WrytingBear's arse (and it was gravy, really), I began to realise something about this process:  In my zeal to metaphorically give him a beat down as we were running neck and neck in word counts, I ended up writing 15,000 words in 4 days. That's more than twice my regular pace, and besides churning out crap I won't be able to use, I completely fried my brain and I was SO completely worn out yesterday that I refused to write and took the day off.

But no more marathon sessions for me. There comes a point when it's good to be writing, and then another point when you're doing it for the sake of a word count that won't mean anything if you churn out nothing but a piece of crap. I'm sticking to my normal chapter length of 2,300 words and pushing through even after it's over for my 70,000 words. That way I'll have a rough first draft, AND I won't fry my circuits in the process.