Word count today: 2070

Total word count: 20,043

I broke 20,000 words today. There's still about a 200 word discrepancy between my word count and the word counter on the NaNoWriMo site, but it's not really worth quibbling about. The NaNoWriMo word counter just went live this weekend, so for the rest of the month I'll use their word count rather than mine. I'm 36% of the way through the month and 40% of the book is written. That's very good. I'm probably two days away from 25K, which would take me to the halfway mark.

I almost gave up on the book today. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm really not wild about where the story's going. I keep feeling the need to create new plot twists to advance the story, probably because the characters aren't that compelling. It's taught me a lot, though. I would need to have a much better handle on my characters before attempting to write another work of fiction.

I went to the NaNoWriMo forums to try to get some help or inspiration for getting through the point where I seem to be hopelessly mired down in lame plot elements. Instead, I found people giving pointers on how to cheat to get to the 50,000 word mark (don't use contractions, have a character become fascinated with a real novel and then quote extensively from it). It's great these folks are writing, but that's pretty sad. It would be like cheating at solitare, or telling your friends and family you finally completed the NY Times crossword puzzle when you in fact did not.

I think the point of this exercise (at least for me) is to have the satisfaction of getting through something difficult, and having something tangible to show for it at the other end. It may not be great, and it may not be deserving of a second draft, but it will be something I've actually written. I do hope this experience will pave the way for me finally getting serious about writing a book-length something. I just don't know what, quite yet.