I thought that since NaNoWriMo has been going on a for a week now, that I would take some time for an update.
Well, my routine is okay. It's comforting, it gives me a chance to straighten up the living room before I work (a cluttered environment = a cluttered mind), and it puts me in the right state of mind with writing.
I had several epiphanes throughout the week, usually surrounding character development of more minor characters, that I do think I'll be able to incorporate into my story. I've also been exchanging personal messages with a few authors at the NaNoWriMo website, which has helped tons! Particularly the fellow author who is writing a novel set in the same era as my own. :)
My enthusiasm was on full blast at the beginning of the week, but has slowly begun to wane. I spend roughly the first two hours of my day working on my novel, and I haven't covered as much ground as I would have liked, though I am meeting my daily writing requirements. In fact, I was ahead of schedule for most of the week.
Today, however, I woke up and just couldn't do it; I couldn't sit still and write. I've been feeling tired, and now I'm at a point in the story where I'm not sure which direction I'm going to go. But, I gave myselef permission to take the day off - writing seven days consecutively, I feel like I have earned a day off. Unfortunately, I didn't take a total day off from writing (hence, this blog post), and I did do some minor era research. I might even take tomorrow off, and readjust my schedule and writing requirements to give myself the weekends off.
Sigh.
Writing everyday is harder than I thought it would be. Not the writing part, exactly, but the focus required to writing about the same thing each day. I'm a roleplayer, meaning I like to participate in collaborate writing on forums; I have a wide range of tastes and preferences, and this is reflected in the things I choose to write about. I think the most challenging part of NaNoWriMo, for me, is to sit down and work on ONE project every day instead of being completely scatter-brained and write about whatever it is that I feel like writing about at that time.
I think I might need to work on structure within my writing... actually schedule time for blogging, for novel writing, for research, for roleplaying.
