Week One

DAY 1 (FRIDAY)

I didn't get much done because I was so tired after work. 97 words. I'm out of the house for most of the day, getting up and going to bed early and, now that my ex-husband has moved out, I no longer have access to a car, so I have to see if I can get a lift with someone and/or take the bus (or a taxi depending on how heavy/awkward what I'm bringing home is). This isn't a terrible hardship, but it is more time-consuming than just being driven. I'm also going to bed at 9:30/10:00 because I have to get up at 5:30, and late-night is usually when I'm most creative. Things might pick up in mid-late November when I stop temping in manual labour and move to a less physically intensive full-time job, but that runs from late afternoon to just before midnight, so I can't say yet. (This actually works out for me since, left to my own devices, I sleep from 2AM to 10AM.)

I'm probably not going to hit 50K words this month, but we'll see. Days I don't work, I can sometimes write several thousand words, and even with work, some days are more productive than others. I'll certainly get something out of it, at least.

DAY 2 (SATURDAY)

A Saturday! Managed 3,044 words today, although some of that is just in my scratchpad file – a doc where I write down scenes that stick in my brain but which may or may not turn into something. But I did bring Assassin AU #7 (Interconnected References) to a point where I'm satisfied with ending it I started this after Workspace, so that's ten months or so of struggling with it. I also got some more done on the extension of Rendezvous (the one where Prowl, Jazz, Bluestreak, Inferno, and Red Alert show up on Earth in TF:P) and, despite myself, broke a scene out of the scratchpad novel to expand into a cop!Prowl/thief!Jazz fic, with the working title of Guarding Meister. (Prowl's not happy about being stuck on protective custody detail with a sassy informant, but what's a young Enforcer to do when he gets orders? Jazz isn't pleased about being stuck in a dull house with cops round-the-clock, but it's better than winding up in a smelter feet-first – and at least he's got someone to look at!)

Also, if you've seen the advice floating around that changing your font to Comic Sans helps to unlock your creativity, I'm afraid I have to tell you it's true. (I use Styles in Word, so all I have to do is change the font in the style palette rather than select and change everything.) Trebuchet MS might work too if you don't want to give Comic Sans credit for anything. It's kind of like it takes your brain from 'I must structure this' to 'eh, not that serious,' and it makes it a lot easier. I cannot believe I'm recommending Comic Sans for anything, but it does an excellent job on busting writer's block, and I'm sorry.

Let's hope I can keep the momentum up on Sunday.

DAY 3 (SUNDAY)

Sunday! Finally got a couple of hours to work on the TF Speedwriting prompt from last week, 'drone auction,' and most of it was just getting down the story that's been floating around in my head for the past week. Plus, it's a perspective flip of For Love Reforms Vitality, so parts of it were just copied from that. Still, I would up with a total of ~3K words written before 3PM, so that's a success by any metric. Not all of that was on the fic became With Full Knowledge of Identity, but still! So I must say I'm pleased with that.

The total for the day was 6,720 words, but that includes the updates to the Assassin AU timeline as I edited part 7. I'm hoping I'm successfully putting hints in that one and not just being vague, but I've been poking away at it for ten months, off and on, and I think I'm just not capable of seeing its faults anymore. Or I've got it right but anxiety!brain doesn't tend to let me feel that way.

Total words so far is ~9K, but I expect that to drop sharply when work resumes and the timeline is completely updated.

Week 2

DAY 4 (MONDAY)

Back to work on Monday and so word count dropped again, this time to 590. I've pretty much only got 2 ½-3 hours before bed by the time I get home, plus whatever I can do on my phone during breaks/lunch – and I don't get the whole break either because I have to go get my phone out of my locker and put it back at the end, plus I'm talking to my coworkers. It eats up a surprising amount of time. I can sometimes get a little bit done on the bus, but not much.

I did get the Perspective Flip fic published under the title With Full Knowledge of Identity. I'd say 'now I'm done with immortal!Jazz and reincarnated!Prowl,' but I said that after In Every Voice He'd Ever Had, and For Love Reforms Vitality and all the snippets from that verse in the Prowl x Jazz Anniversary Challenge 2019 anthology, so we see what value that claim has. ^_^

DAY 5 (TUESDAY)

129 words on my phone and that was it. I didn't sleep much, then I was out of coffee, and black tea doesn't quite cut it, plus I was on my feet for almost all of my workday then had to run errands, and at the end of it I was so tired I was in bed by 9:00 and that's after forcing myself to try and stay up.

DAY 6 (WEDNESDAY)

Wednesday was slightly better than Tuesday, with 298 words written. But I'm tense over finances and not knowing if I'll have work next week or not which isn't helping. (I will have work the week after when I start a permanent full-time job (again, at last!), but I'm quite poor right now and pretty much praying nothing breaks down and needs to be replaced/repaired 'cuz it ain't happening.)

DAY 7 (THURSDAY)

More done today and part of the slowdown is that I'm editing the next installment of Assassin AU (Interconnected References) instead of out-and-out writing. Most of what actually got written got done on my phone at lunch/break/during my commute. But after 10 months of poking at it here and there, I want to get started posting Assassin pt. 7.

Thursday finished with 455 words written. I'm just below the target number for NaNo and that's just because I had a very productive weekend last week.

DAY 8 (FRIDAY)

Got 247 words written on my phone at lunch (part of the expansion of Rendezvous from the Prowl x Jazz Anniversary Challenge 2019 where Prowl, Jazz, and Bluestreak arrive on Earth in the TF: Prime universe.) Another hundred and some during the evening, editing Interconnected References. Fallen below the NaNo target word count but I'm hoping to meet or exceed that again this weekend.

NaNoWriMo Week 1 & 2