Day Twelve: Done. 1,024 words.
Today, I received three story rejections. Three rejections from three journals, all within about five hours. Three different stories, each one rejected.
Not a great day.
Not the kind of day that makes a person say, “Gee, I feel like writing a thousand words about something.” More like the kind of day where you just want to pour more wine and binge-watch something mindless until sleep claims you.
But I wrote anyway. Even though somebody on Duotrope posted a rejection for a journal where I have a submission pending, and their story went in four days before mine, and I’ve wondered ever since if I’m going to have a fourth rejection before bedtime, I wrote my thousand words.
Best part was that it was an actual substantive addition to my novel. It’s not a complete scene—after all, I need to have somewhere to pick up tomorrow—but it’s not just rambling for the sake of satisfying my word count. It’s interesting, it’s meaty, it has potential to be important to the book. It’s real writing.
Turned out to be a decent day after all.
P. Jo Anne Burgh 
That’s super, and I’m so glad you’re making progress on your novel. So much of this is about getting the words on the page. Then, it will be possible to see the arc of the plot in its entirety.
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So true! If I hadn’t been pushing to get the words on the page, I wouldn’t have discovered some parts of the story arc. I wouldn’t try to produce at this rate for longer than 14 days (and frankly, even that feels long), but it’s definitely been worth the effort for this short spell!
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Yes, it’s hard to keep up the momentum. NaNoWriMo has pushed me to write more than I normally would, but if you miss a day, you feel like you’re letting yourself down. It’s also hard to catch up. Josh Mohr talks about the first draft being the “discovery draft.” I like that because it removes some of the pressure and makes that first draft more like play.
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I’ve done NaNoWriMo a couple times, but I ended up tossing nearly everything I wrote because I was just throwing down anything to make my word counts.
I usually focus on time spent rather than word counts, because that allows for editing. When I’m trying to hit 1K words, I’m a lot less likely to stop after 900 words and go back to delete because I have a much better idea that will handle the plot point much more elegantly and succinctly. Granted, maybe I needed to write the 900 words to figure out the new direction, but it’s hard to then kill it when I’m so close to the target word count.
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