Report from the Trenches -- Mid NaNo

I signed off last night with 43,189 words in the bank.
I could write less than 500 words per day for the rest of the month and still complete the NaNo word count. My story is obviously not going to be finished in so few words, however, but if I keep going at a minimum 2000 words per day pace for the remainder of the month, I think I will be able to complete the first draft of the whole story by month end.

That's the goal at this point, at any rate. Finish the story by the end of November. I have the house to myself this weekend so expect to be able to put in some serious time on this thing.

The SL Wrimos are still going strong and in-world write-ins remain a popular method for boosting members' word counts. On my local front, folks aren't so keen to get together. Last night was the only meeting scheduled actually within the month of November and most of our number did not show up. Some had conflicts, others were perhaps too busy writing. The rest? I don't know. Chalk it up to November in Ontario. It was a cold night. The type of weather that, when we get it in March, everyone runs outside in short-sleeved shirts singing, "Spring is here! Spring is here!" but in November just feels COLD.

On the personal front, everything is going as well as or better than I had expected -- save for the whole sleeping reasonable hours bit. I'm still up till ~ 2AM writing most mornings. I shall make another stab at turning that around in the back end of the month but it's definitely a challenge given my limited access to quiet places to work.

Storywise, I'm at the point now where my plot is really starting to come together -- and I need it to come together now -- which makes the whole reader-polling aspect of the process a challenge, but I'm learning to ask questions which will enable me to get to where I need to be, regardless of which direction I need to take to get there, and which are hopefully still of interest to my readers. I confess that I did consider asking really leading questions in an attempt to convince my readers to vote the way I want them to vote, but I decided that would be cheating (not to mention dangerous if I got troublemakers voting deliberately against the grain!) Back on October 31st, when none of my characters had been created yet, I did not anticipate caring this much about them!