Not Making The Wordcount

This has been a bit of a below par week when it comes to keeping up with the NaNoWriMo novel. In the past six or so days, I've produced a little under two thousand words. And one thousand, five hundred of those were yesterday, at an official write-in. Apart from emphasising just how useful those things are, it indicates how very little I've been working on the book this week. I'm now about four thousand words behind schedule.

I'm being slightly unfair on myself. It's not like I've done nothing at all on the book in the past week. I've come back to it, adjusting things, shifting scenes around, differing the order on events. I had to print out a copy of the work in progress, just so I had a physical copy that I could scrawl all over, annotate, and jot down ideas. I find that for my muddled mind, this works very well. You're not really  supposed to start editing and re-writing until after Novembet 30th (or completing 50,000 words, whichever comes first), but I found that I was slamming into a lot of narrative walls, because I simply didn't know what my characters were doing, or why. To be fair, that's still the case, but at least the events themselves have some kind of narrative logic to them now, and are beginning to suggest whole new scenarios all by themselves. I don't know when I'll catch up with the target word count, but it's still an education. I'm realising just how difficult it is to write even one of the most terrible books I read on the kindle.

The improv workshops (at the Iron Duke) continue to go well, although it'd be good to get a few more regulars. There's a few people who have been continually trying to get along, but life, plans and financial constraints keep getting in the way. We have about six more workshops (I think) before we take a break for Christmas.

And finally (for this blog, which is just me getting my groove on after not writing in it for a week), I have two ghost walks this week, on Friday and Saturday. The nights are getting colder now, and so the crowds are getting smaller (again, there's only about five weeks left before we close up for Christmas). But the crowds are getting more interesting. One night, I had two drunk couples who heckled me for the hour (I've never been heckled as a stand up before, it was surprising to be heckled as aguide on a Ghost Walk).

But, I'll leave this blog for now. The theory is that I'll write a bit more of the novel. And, in theory, so etching vaguely intelligent for tomorrow's blog.