Halfway

Yesterday I made it to the halfway point in the NaNo challenge.  By my reckoning, I'm 4K short of where I should be in mid-November, but nothing I can do about it now--lost those two days in the first week, no margin for error left at this juncture.  It was enough that I reached 25K right on the day I needed to.

Still, I expected to do more.  I had a long chapter fleshed out, just waiting to be out of my head and onto metaphoric paper.  Then, two paragraphs in, I realized I'd described a scene differently several chapters back, leaving out something crucial that I needed in this new scene.  Buggers.

And here's where I screw up, every time.  You would think it helps my writing, having been an editor, proofreader, worked for years in publishing, know the ropes, yada yada. But you would be so, so wrong peeps.  At least, that skill set doesn't work for me.  I over think, can't stop myself from editing, rewriting, staring into the hazy distance searching for that elusively perfect, just right, word.  I spent the better part of the afternoon doing all of the above, first searching for the original scene, then debating which part to change--old or new.  And it cost me, this editorial angst. I need to just write, let the words fall where they may, and sort out the deets later. Anytime after November later.  

Frankly, I'll be leaping up and down with joy on December 1st, hopefully having survived another grueling year of why do I do this to myself agony.  I had a great plan yesterday, a chapter all worked out, speed writing here I come.  Instead, I was proofreader, editor and idiot.  Exhausting.

It also doesn't help that I have a pile of books to read, the chorus of "pick me, pick me" growing louder by the day.  Unfortunately, I can't immerse myself in my own story and read someone else's at the same time.  A defect for sure, but for whatever reason, I can't do it. So, I've been reading magazines and Christmas catalogs to give my brain a break from writing...but the books, whingeing and wailing, calling out to me?  If anything makes me throw in the towel this year, it will be that stack of books.

Though really, only two weeks to go and the madness ends.  Seems doable, doesn't it??