This is my third report on my progress toward my goal of completing a 50,000 word novel by November 30 as part of National Novel Writing Month. Read more of my thoughts on NaNoWriMo.

Now I’m definitely behind. My plan was to have over 30,000 words done by now and to hit 40,000 by the end of the week. The minimum I should have done by now is 31,673. I’m sitting at 18,901. Hmm.

My wrists are feeling much better, but they still get tired easily and hurt when I forget and do things like use a can opener. I’m still waiting for my Dragon NaturallySpeaking software to arrive. I’m kicking myself for not ordering it sooner and especially for opting for free shipping from Amazon. I’m not expecting the software to arrive before the end of the week, so I’m not sure I’m going to have time to get used to it and do one big last push to finish 50,000 words by November 30.

On the other hand, since I haven’t been doing much actual writing, I’ve had plenty of time to think about my novel. When I started, I knew vaguely what would happen in the middle, and I had several possible endings in mind. Now, I’ve figured out the ending, including what I think will be a satisfying plot twist involving a character that didn’t exist when I began writing. Some of the details of the middle still have to be filled in, but I’m sure that will come while I’m writing. Or when I’m going back over my novel on November 30, trying to find places to insert extra words. I still think I’m going to run out of story before I get to 50,000 words.

An unfortunate side effect of letting my story languish has been my diminishing interest in it. Especially now that I know what happens in the end, I’m less interested in writing it out. I’m still interested in writing, of course. It’s just that while I’ve been neglecting my NaNoWriMo novel, a couple of other story ideas have snuck in and usurped its place in my imagination. I’ve had this experience many times before, and it has derailed many previous story attempts. I’ll write more about predatory story ideas tomorrow.

I have a strong suspicion at this point that I won’t “win” NaNoWriMo this year by finishing my novel before November 30. Even if I stopped right now, though, I would still have more words into this story than anything I’ve done before. I keep telling mysef that counts for something.

For any other writers in search of inspiration, John at Writer’s Resource Center has compiled some inspirational quotes. My favorite is this one by Ray Bradbury: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

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