15k and Picking Up Steam

Chris Baty threw down the gauntlet last night in his Week Two pep talk email:

Meanwhile, back in the trenches, I sent out a pep talk [Sunday night] challenging everyone in NaNoLand to get to 15,000 words by bedtime on Monday.

I so totally kicked that challenge's ass: 15,005 words, baby! I'm only one day behind now, which means I've already made up for one of the two days during the first week that I barely wrote anything. As Baty points out in his pep talk email, this year's November is blessed with 5 whole weekends, so I'm gonna catch up before the end of the month. I'm excited. :)

Things are starting to pick up in my story, too. Dark secrets are coming to light, both for Our Heroine and someone who was supposed to be just a "scenery" character but is now vying for a larger supporting role. Cardboard-cutout mean characters are discovered to have good reasons for their actions. Our Hero is finally showing a little bit of interest in Our Heroine; sure did take his sweet time about it!

The writing is still atrocious, of course. This is NaNoWriMo, after all. But I'm actually getting more enthusiastic about my story than the first couple days, which is different from my two failed NaNo attempts in 2004 and 2005. Whee! Later is the time for atrocity-fixing; now is the time to put butt in chair, fingers on keyboard, and get that first draft out of my head on down on paper (as it were).

I fudged the timestamp of this post, but it's only 15 minutes after midnight and definitely before bedtime, so it's still within the spirit of Baty's challenge. I don't feel guilty, not one bit. :)