Week Two - In Which Your Host Realizes That, Yes, The Self-Editor Is An Annoying Little Snit

Yowza.

So, yesterday marked the beginning of Week Two of the NaNoWriMo 2005 adventure. To reach the 50k wordcount goal, I should ideally have entered Week Two with more than 10,000 words under my belt.

Current word count, as of this morning: 9,629.

I'm already behind, and Week Two is noted for its almost-universal drop in production, as participants realize the utter insanity of the task they've assigned themselves and wistfully long for those carefree days when they could just plop down in front of the TV and veg out to the constant CSI reruns on Spike.

Well... maybe that's just me, but you get the point. There's a reason they call it the Great Slowdown.

I am unimaginably busy this year - working one full-time job, pulling anywhere between 15-30 hours a week on a side contract, one 4 1/2-year-old son whom I've unabashedly gotten addicted to the Lego Star Wars PS2 game, and a wife who occasionally likes to see and talk with her charming husband - so I suppose it's not terribly surprising that I'm behind. But I took three vacation days from my full time job last week for the sole purpose of writing my NaNo Novel, with the outlandish goal of pumping out 10,000 words a day, thereby giving me a nice, comfy cushion going into Week Two.

Needless to say, after the first vacation day, I adjusted my goals downward, as expectation smashed headlong into reality. However, I thought it still realistic - indeed, well within the bounds of possibility - to reach my wordcount total from last year (a little over 12,000 words) by the time Week Two rolled around. Shouldn't be too hard, right? That's about 4,000 words a day for three days, less if I could pump out a couple thousand words on the weekend. Eminently doable.

And that's when my dreaded Self-Editor, the manky little ass, decided to slap me upside the head and put me in my place.

I have always been a slow writer, though my speed has become markedly reduced the older I get. It is because of my Self-Editor, of course - I'm constantly tinkering with what I write, going back and adding some stuff, changing passages, deleting, cringing, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I wrote that...

And so, my progress slows, my thinking becomes muddled as I find myself going backward while still trying to go forward with my story, and I find it increasingly more difficult to find the right words to express what I want to say. Dammit, the story's there in my head, I know where I need to go... but it's the getting there, the actual physical act of translating thought to word, that trips me up.

I know the whole point of this crazy enterprise is quantity, not quality, but I seem constitutionally incapable of ignoring the quality of my prose.

Gah. I'll muddle through, somehow. Or not. But I'll try.

I just wish I could bitch-slap that heinous Self-Editor but good.

It'd probably leave a mark, though.