And so it begins.

I have been working on book six for a few weeks now. With the start of NaNoWriMo, I've been a little extra focused on it. It is hard to get good writing time in with small children in the house. The act of disciplining myself to sit at the desk and work while they are at school has been hard for me. Over the last few days, however, I have been making progress. I have just about 10k words to show for about 8 hours of work. My goal is to get my hourly word count higher. Adjusting to the keyboard on this laptop has been a bit more challenging than I thought.

Still, I am at work and trying to get the story written out before the holidays hit in full force. I think the biggest challenge I am facing right now is resisting the temptation to screw around on Youtube and Facebook. Twitter hasn't caught my fancy quite as strongly as the other two. I am sure, however, at some point in this process it will prove as much of a time sink as the others.

Aside from the difficulties of staying on task, I have been slowed down some by the fact that I have to go back through the previous five books to make sure that everything for the scenes and characters match up properly. I think I lost about an hour today to just making sure I had three characters written correctly. I really should have started my note card system with the first book. It would have made this so much easier. I suppose it is something I can do once I get this manuscript finished.

As of this evening, my word count is standing at 20210. I may be able to eek out another one thousand words if I stay focused until it is time for me to head to bed. I lost count how many cups of coffee I had today. Maybe I'll start keeping a tally of that. Until tomorrow, I wish everyone taking on NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo the best of luck. Remember, you're not competing with anyone but yourself. And the word count is less important than telling the story.