Writing 50K Words

because i love pain

November 3rd

I ask my fellow writer to guess how many words I have written so far.

“Four thousand?” His guess is optimistic; generous; indicates his belief that I am a disciplined woman of her word.

“No,” I say. “The answer is zero. Zero! I HAVE WRITTEN ZERO WORDS!” I scream and then I combust into a cloud of disgust and glittering rage that ends up stuck in my carpet for weeks. My gracious friend clutches his pearls and gasps in horror at my admission.

I decided to do First Draft November, where you write 50K words in the month of November. The hope is to finish with the first draft of a novel. If I write approximately 1,667 words a day, then I will hit the goal by November 30th. I don’t know if I have the attention span to work on just one project, so I may do several projects and try to hit 50K through all of them combined.

But here I am, on November 3rd, with nothing! I am already five thousand words behind! I decided to do this on a whim, and now I am wallowing in regret! Plus, work just got 2x busier and I’m supposed to be preparing to apply for a new job! Why am I adding fifty thousand words onto my plate? I am exhibiting the behavior of a fool, a complete and utter fool!

Total word count: 0

November 4th

1,165 words. It’s past midnight and this was all I had time for.

Total word count: 1165

November 5th

1,009 words. It’s past midnight again. At least I finished my short story. Chat, am I cooked?

Total word count: 2176

November 7th

I was editing my short story yesterday instead of writing something new. Today I wrote some new stuff. Only 373 words of it, though.

Total word count: 2549

November 9th

2,469 words today. I started splitting my novel into chapters and that helped the words to flow more easily. I’m still 9,985 words behind on schedule though.

Total word count: 5018

November 12th

I may have skipped two days, but today I have unlocked Rambling. 1,414 words today. I’m still super behind and also VERY TIRED AND SLEEP-DEPRIVED.

Total word count: 6432

November 13th

I wrote 133 words today. I did not have the time to do more. I can’t have a social life, do decent at work, exercise, eat well, sleep enough, and complete all my annoying life chores like calling the dentist and fixing my tires and buying groceries, never mind writing 1K+ words every day. It’s simply not possible. Something is going to have to suffer. What shall it be? I would readily give up my social life, except lately I’ve been getting better at being not anti-social, and I kind of don’t want to lose my progress. Maybe I’ll just stop eating. That’s not essential, right? Or, I can just pack in 2,000 calories during lunch so I can conk out in the middle of the workday and then I’ll have enough time in the evening to write. Then I’ll get fired from my job because I fell asleep in front of the team leads too often (which I’ve actually done twice already), and then once I’m unemployed I’ll have an infinite amount of time to write 50K words. Then, because I’ll lack income and won’t be able to pay for food or housing, I’ll keel over and die. Then my work will become well-known and loved all over the world because that’s what happens to writers after they die. I think this is a good plan.

Total word count: 6565

November 15th

I actually have not unlocked Rambling. I merely got a free trial of it and now it’s gone.

I’m writing chapter six and it’s really hitting me how bad I am at worldbuilding. My brain is giving me nothing. Am I even a fiction writer? What am I doing? Do I even like what I’ve written so far? (Debatable.)

I thought I wrote a lot. Then I pressed command+shift+c and reality slapped me in the face at the same time as that measly 502 word count on the screen. That was disappointing, so I decided to read the short story I finished drafting earlier this month. The short story had time to marinate, and now with fresh eyes I can see that it is NOT GOOD.

The short story is not good. Yet I needed to write it; for myself. If I edit it and make it better, then the story can eventually be for other people. However, it’s pretty bad right now, so the story is just for me. (This is barely a comfort, but beggars can’t be choosers.)

I’m going to go read because I clearly cannot write anything interesting or comprehensible.

Total word count: 7067

November 16th

I started reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I took note of the way he was writing dialogue, the details he chose to include or expand upon, and I got ideas for how I could be going deeper into the world. I wrote 2,241 words today.

Total word count: 9308

November 17th

I wrote about 770 words by hand during a very big, very long, mostly boring meeting. After editing it at home, it became 800. I finally surpassed 10,000 for my total word count! Now I’m only 18,231 words behind schedule.

Total word count: 10108

November 19th

I had time to write yesterday, but I didn’t. Instead I lay on my bed and stared at the wall for a long time.

behold the wall, the object of my attention.

I have also been preparing to apply for a new job while everything is going on (maybe that’s why I could only manage looking at the wall). The job effort has been reminding me how feeble my passion is for my own profession. I feel like my father right now, who was not that passionate about his field, but it made money and he could do it, so he did it. And it’s fine. It’s fine!

Lately, random muscles in my body have been twitching in a manner that remind me of a recently-deceased insect. Today I wrote 392 words.

iykyk

Total word count: 10500

November 23rd

645 today.

Total word count: 11045

November 27th

I didn’t write for five days. But I did think about my “novel” quite a bit (a big part of writing for me is actually just hours of thinking), and I realized that I had strayed from the original premise. So I went back to exploring that premise, and I churned out 1068 words.

Someone at my friendsgiving today asked me if I was writing a novel. I said no, because in the moment I wasn’t planning on continuing a story I had little interest in. But maybe I do have some interest now. So maybe I lied.

Total word count: 12113

November 30th

At last we have arrived, at the end of the month and the challenge. Did I somehow scrounge up 37,887 words in the last three days? Of course not. I only added 1,379 to my count.

Even though I only got 27% of the way there, I’m sure I can cook up some “journey-not-the-destination” cliché to round out my public log of personal failure.

I’ve told people that I write short stories because I don’t have the stamina to write a novel. But after this month, I think I actually do have the stamina. I just don’t have the time, because I’m a sleep-deprived corporate rat running on the hamster wheel of adulthood and I hate running. Plus, writing that much requires constant literary refueling, which also takes a lot of time. My brain stopped producing ideas in the middle of the month, and it only restarted when I began reading 1Q84. And not just any ol’ book can be fuel. This one, which was recommended to me not by social media but by a woman I met at a party who studied foreign languages and literatures, happened to be the kind of book that is fuel for me. It’s hard to find a good book that energizes you. There are so many out there that are just extremely okay. I need that woman to keep giving me recs.

I finished November with a short story draft and ten chapters of a novel (haven’t decided if I’ll keep going). I’m nowhere near 50K words, but I can be satisfied with this. Things rarely go the way I plan, and I am learning to accept my limitations and acknowledge what I gain. What more can I ask of myself, anyway?

I’m going to bed now.

Total word count: 13492