A mostly solid day of writing. Andrea and I went out to the coffee shop for a morning session. I struggled with the words. Came home and napped.

Woke and procrastinated until the late evening and then…something broke open. Next thing I knew, I was over 2,000 words and it was almost midnight. I’m not saying they’re great words. Hell, some of them ain’t even good words. They’re my words, though, and I’m keeping them.

—

Project: Black Mirror

New words written: 2,184

Reason for stopping: Midnight

—

Something one of my Clarion teachers said keeps coming back to me as I write, and that was that the first draft of his novels were more detailed outlines than fully fleshed out drafts. When I’m picking up speed through this draft, I find that I’ve slipped into more of a detailed draft mode and my tense shifts from past to present.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This is a rough draft. It’s a learning draft, even if I end up throwing everything out and starting over when the month is over (which I doubt will happen).

Milestones, which I alluded to, were broken today. Two of them. First, this is the longest I’ve stayed in Nanowrimo since I started attempting it. I can hear the voice of Gold Five in my head every morning when I wake up, telling me to stay on target, and I will. Second, I broke 8k words on a single piece of fiction. My longest single story previous is my time traveling Tesla alt. history that clocked in just under 7k in rough draft.