It's been seven days of crazy writing momentum for me. I am killing my word count and I feel like I'm flying through it.

To keep at par I needed to end day 7 with a total count of 11,666 - instead, I shut things down for the night with 20,083! I'm way ahead of the curve right now and that feels good!

This has been helped by a number of important factors:

1. My children are one year older than they were last year, hence requiring less of my undivided attention.

2. I spent the whole month of October writing about writing - this not only got me geared up to write {duh!}, it also served as amazing training for the marathon of NaNoWriMo.

3. I created a meal plan and stuck to it - no panicky stops at the grocery store, roaming the aisles, wasting time, looking for meal inspiration. No take out. Not even a frozen pizza. {Yes, it's only week one but whatever - this is a win!}

4. My husband was gone for six of those seven days. Because of the shifts he works he is often away from home for days at a time, it just so happened that on top of his normal work hours he was also whisked off for a pool tournament in Niagara Falls. Yes, that sucks BUT it also meant guilt-free writing time for me...not that he ever makes me feel guilty - he's hugely supportive - I just feel like we really don't see a lot of each other so I don't like to be locked away writing the whole time he's home...it makes me feel like a bad wife.

5. I knew what was happening in my story and so I knew what I was going to write every day I sat down at the keyboard. Last year I didn't have a clue except some abstract idea of hey, what if a guy built his own weird church out in the forest somewhere? This year I already knew my characters and their motivation - this has made week one a breeze.

6. Two other members of my Writer's Jam are also participating and everything is always better when you tackle it with friends!

7. I should have had worship band practice on Wednesday night but practice was cancelled and I got to do some coffee shop writing instead!

I've been sharing daily blurbs, snapshots, and excepts from the NaNo project and I'll try to keep it up through the month just in case you're interested in what I'm up to. Things have been pretty heavy so far...you know, all that meaty stuff that makes up a character's motivation and informs the eventual redemption {or not...you'll have to wait and see!} but I do expect it to turn around to the positive soon {or not...you'll have to wait and see!} 

I'm semi-excited about this project. I think it has real potential to be a great story but I also think I'm still too close to the last project. The Church In The Wildwood is now in the hands of beta-readers and I'm feeling like a mother who's just dropped her first child off at kindergarten and went home to start building a replacement child out of Play-Doh. I'm not invested like I should be BUT if, at the end of November, I have the ugly skeleton of a novel ready, then it will be easy to pour in some guts when I'm finally emotionally ready to fully enter the world I'm creating.

So there you have it. Week one is in the bag. Only three more weeks to go. 

Will 50,000 words eat my dust? Only time will tell...