Words: 36,310

Cups of tea: Between 16 and 28?

Number of nights writing after midnight: Let’s not talk about that, shall we?

Sanity: Slightly blurry. Living in a fog more or less after writing late at night. Which is not entirely different from normal…

It’s safe to say I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. NaNoWriMo, everyone! Don’t think, just write, and worry about it later. If ever.

It’s remarkably wonderful. And weird. Which is why I’m still here, three years running.

It would be easier if I didn’t keep having ideas for other projects while I’m trying to write. Why is it my characters have so little manners that they insist on barging in and describing their backstories now, when they belong in another book? Was it really necessary for a character to suggest how fun it would be to buy him a hot doughnut and sit laughing at my crazy reality over coffee? Coffee which neither of us care to drink? Can’t they behave and do as they’re told?

As if they ever have.

This is the point in NaNo that I start to get a little nervous in the novel-process. As I try to figure out just how many words the novel needs to get “finished.” Am I chowing through my word count so fast I’ll have nothing left by next week? Am I writing too slow, and I’ll still be up at 11:59 on November 30th, saying “Not yet! Not yet! This was a 100,000 word novel in disguise! It was all a lie!”

Because, in all honesty, I could quit at 50,000 words as having completed the novel and no one would care. It’s just me who would be judging and wondering and dissatisfied if I didn’t write an ending. If I didn’t finish tying together the plot threads in the middle. If I still had the characters haunting the back of my head, asking me why I would leave before the story’s done.

Because I’m still adding new characters. As of yesterday.

Yeah, I don’t know why either. Apparently a fencing master was necessary. I’m not going to argue with the man with a sword.

Also university finals. They be a coming. Less said about that the better.

I think every year of NaNo I’m baffled. It’s as if I should have it figured out by now, but I don’t. It’s like plunging off the top of a waterfall–no matter how prepared you think you are, it’s still the same uncontrollable thrill in the end.

So here’s to the weird and wonderful. However many words we write. And wherever it is we wind up.