NaNoWriMo ~ word count

Day 01 = 1,708
Day 02 = 3,337
Day 03 = 4,469
Day 04 = 5,402
Day 05 = 6,912
Day 06 = 7,227
Day 07 = 8,191
Day 08 = 10,805
Day 09 = 11,192
Day 10 = 13,181
Day 11 = 15,103
Day 12 = 18,237
Day 13 = 20,166
Day 14 = 22,008

Do you want to know what surprised me the most about writing this novel? Let me take you to the answer in a round-about way:

It turned out that Chattanooga, the fourth largest city in Tennessee, had no official group because we had no "ML" ... which stands for Municipal Liaison. You know me, and you probably know what I'd do, right? I'd get a group of us together one way or the other. It turned out that someone who had been an ML several times would be in Chattanooga during November. She volunteered (Tennessee is called the volunteer state, so she fits right in) to be our ML, and two minutes into November she was made our official liaison! Hurray for us! She won't be here next year, so I volunteered to be next year's ML. She thought that was a great idea ... until she learned this is my very first year, which means my very first attempt to write 50K words in 30 days. Yes, that's 50,000 words. Since we were in the flush of week one, she advised that I hold off.

Week Two arrived, and I (along with every other NaNoWriMo newbie, most likely) wondered why I had thought I could do this. At one point during Week Two, my word count was behind almost 4,000 words ... counting the 1,667 needed per day to make the total by the end of the month. Nevertheless, I was trying to do all the events the ML set up for Chattanooga, even though everyone else arrived at the write-ins with laptops ... and I had my tablet and pens. I figured the write-ins were making things worse for me, since I could be home using my computer to blast away at the word count.

I've been to three write-ins so far, but ... SURPRISE !!! ... I am catching up on the number of words written! Even at the write-ins I scrawled out more words than I thought could be written by hand. There were 15-minute word wars, where we tried to beat our previous 15-minute count, and ... SURPRISE ... I wrote faster and faster each time. I discovered that the fellowship of others with the same goal of writing 50,000 words inspired me to keep going. I have now almost caught up with the daily count, and our ML said the final week brings a rush of words. She says we can make it even if we don't hit 20,000 words until November 20th. Look at my word count above. See that? I have already passed 22,000 words.

Thanks to all of you who keep posting a sentence or two, telling me you think I can do it, that I can make it to the end and actually have 50,000 words when I finish the day on November 30th. You know what? I'm doing it!