Halfway Through November

If I had been participating properly in NaNoWriMo, I woiuld have written about 26,000 words by now. Spoiler Alert: I wrote just over 1,000.  

With about a half month to go, it's too soon to label myself an abject failure, but I'm well on my way. 

I wrote about my fear of losing Nano: it's not a big deal. I'm going to keep writing. 

Besides my normal problem of not sticking to a writing schedule, the hour-long review of notes on Halloween night wasn't enough prep to get back into the Merwinville concept--I kept referring to notes, handouts, and the Internet. I actually stopped writing a scene to look up if people in Connecticut drank coffee in the 1830s. 

After I finished the first draft of the first chaper, I went back to add details. Later I moved material from Chapter One to Chapter Two. These are all things you're not supposed to do in Nano. The only way to get to 50,000 words in a month is to explicitly not edit anything. Save that for later. That is true of all writing.

Today I wrote a bit about Sylvanus seeing opportunities and then some background about railroad/transportation from 1800-1850. I called the file Pre-Chapter One. As I think about it, it's probably not in the best place, but I'm not going to worry about that now. 

I previously used my Ancestry.com membership to research Sylvanus Merwin's descendants but didn't get very far. I had wanted to cancel my membership because the monthly charges are too high. So I spent several hours of the last few days of access to do more research. I found an interesting connection that may be very important in my book. 

At least I'm learning in my failure.