Note to self: do not drink excessive amounts of cider at the NaNoWriMo Kick-Off. You will wake up with a blinding headache and not want to write.

I managed a grand total of 367 words today. Better than zero, I suppose - but not what I was hoping for :(

I decided to adopt the carrot approach this week - catch up four days' worth and I can take time out to see "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" today. It seems to have worked, as the total below proves (goals listed will be number of days elapsed x 1667 words):

Goal: 6667
Done: 6814

As for the movie...

A pretty good week, despite one off day - I'm very slightly ahead of the game, but nowhere near enough to feel complacent.

Goal: 18,334
Done: 19,109

What I am finding, however, is that it's hard to switch from the main plotline to the sub-plot and back again, so I think I'm going to have to write the scenes somewhat out of order if I want to keep up my momentum.

After a good solid start, I've hit the first major obstacle. Yesterday I started feeling unwell, with a kind of nebulous headache/earache/toothache. Not sure if it's a cold coming on, my wisdom teeth playing up or perhaps an ear infection. Anyway, I've hardly written anything in the past 48 hours :(

Today I took the day off work, but I still felt too ill to write. Instead I've been re-reading some old conlang notes. If I can do some useful world-building in my downtime, at least the day won't be totally wasted.

After a couple more days of feeling unwell I finally managed to pick up the pace again, and have made reasonable progress. However I'm now a little over five thousand words behind, so I'll need to work hard for the rest of the month. This coming week I want to concentrate on not getting further behind; I have the whole of the last week of November off work, so I don't want to burn out now and be unable to write when I actually have the time free.

Goal: 30,000
Done: 24,537

Despite my best intents, I have managed to slip back quite a bit this week, and I now have eight thousand words to make up!

Goal: 41,667
Done: 33,696

Mostly I found it hard to write during the week - the atrium, where I usually sit and write at lunchtime, has been busy, and I have also had lunchtime meetings to attend. Worst of all, I haven't written anything today, because I ran out of outline and needed to brainstorm some plot ideas.

I just hope I can make up the deficit in the last five days!

There's something about a deadline that just forces you to get down to work. Thanks to a big push yesterday, I reached 50k this morning and got my total validated :)

Goal: 50,000
Done: 50,200

The first three days of the week went pretty well, and I managed to write about two normal days' worth on each of them. By Wednesday night I was within about six thousand words of the finishing line - close enough that it was almost achievable in one day. Well, OK, not quite, but I still managed 5,815 on my last full day of writing. That's my best every daily total, for this or last year's NaNoWriMo!

Now I've just completely run out of steam. I don't have the energy to write the big action finale, so I'm going to quit whilst I'm ahead and recuperate :)