Day Eight: 16,413

Tired. Head cold. Getting used to churning out the words. Friends are being very supportive. The Writing Demons took a flex today, and I didn't miss 'em in the slightest (they'll be crushed when they find out). I went to karate class, despite the head cold. This may have been rash. I am, at the moment, more than 3,000 words ahead of the tally recommended by the NaNo folks. (If you average 1,667 words per day, every day, you get your 50,000 by November 30. So far I am averaging just a very small tad over 2,000 words per day.) It's the wordcount. Wordcount numbers are rattling around the inside of my head like marbles in a glass jar. And about as quietly.

Is it a good idea to obsess so much about wordcount? It is for me, because if I can keep this up for a month, I'll have serious wordcount muscles, which are about the weakest of the major writing-muscle groups for me. I've got vocabulary, spelling, syntax, and grammar muscles that are the envy of many. My plot muscles seem to be okay, and my characterization muscles are at least adequate, according to critics. But being able to churn out wordcount has hitherto eluded me. Even at Clarion I seldom produced more than 1,000 or 1,500 words per day, and that was on a good day.

I'm finding it hard, on reflection, to believe that it's only been 10 months since I showed up in Brisbane for Clarion South. It's been a very, very action-packed 10 months, to say the least.