NaNoWriMo Diary – Day 5

Total number of words written: 10231

Words Written Today: 2121 (so far)

Coke consumed: 2 cans

Chocolate consumed: 6 fun size Milky Ways, 4 squares Marble chocolate, bowl of ice-cream drizzled with chocolate topping (so far)

As it stands, day one was my best day in terms of word count. Day two was pretty good, considering my morning meant getting child one ready for kinder and dropping him off, followed by playgroup for child two and a trip to the library, meaning my morning was a complete write off. But in two days I had managed to reach the day three goal. Things went downhill a bit after that.

On Thursday morning I managed only 70 words before breakfast, and I was lucky to get that. Dear daughter was having a rather demanding morning and every time I put fingers to the keyboard I was pulled away by whinging, nagging, fighting, or sometimes just plain old wanting a chat. I gave up trying to type. I also realised, after the last two days of writing, it was time to get stuck into some housework as the toys were taking over and the washing piling up. Between bits of housework, when the kids were playing nicely, I slipped in a sentence here and there. With a burst in the afternoon and another big burst after the kids went to bed, my Thursday word count wasn’t looking so bad after all.

Friday. Oh, Friday. ‘Twas really not a good writing day. I woke up tired. No words at all before breakfast, despite being up quite early, as my brain just couldn’t think straight enough to put words on the page. Got a little bit written after taking son to kinder and before I had to take daughter to her swimming lesson. Then to the in-laws’ for lunch and an afternoon spent with my hubby’s sister who was visiting with her family from interstate. Got a little writing done before cooking dinner and a bit more after kids were in bed, but went to bed early with only 800 words under my belt for the day. Was thankful to have that extra padding from previous days.

Which brings me to today. Although Saturday is my ‘day off’ from housework, I was worried with the expected hot temperatures I wouldn’t get much writing done since I don’t cope well in the heat while pregnant (brain turns to mush). So I endeavoured to get as much writing done as possible before it got too hot. But I found my story had hit a point where I wasn’t sure how to push forward, so the writing was slow. On top of that, my motivation was low after receiving a short story rejection in my email (one I had been feeling quite positive about). I found myself procrastinating on the internet, but my husband was my saviour (though he doesn’t know it). He wanted to watch a movie on the computer, so I transferred my story over to my laptop, which not only had no internet to distract me, but also only has Wordpad, which doesn’t show the word count like Word does, so I couldn’t obsessively keep checking my word count. I ended up staying on my laptop for the rest of the day and as a result hit 2000 words for the day, pushing me over the 10000 word mark in total. And the heat turned out to be not so bad after all, I managed to keep the house relatively cool, plus the dining table is a much cooler place to write than the computer (as that room gets quite warm in the afternoon).

As for the 2 year old whip cracker… Sitting at my laptop, and getting a wee bit distracted, I started singing along to the children’s show that was on TV. My daughter, who was sitting opposite at me, looked at me with the sternest of looks and jabbed a pointed finger at my laptop as if to say, “Stop singing, keep writing.”

Point taken.