Hope you had a good Thanksgiving! I ended up relaxing a bit more than I anticipated. My Internet went out in the morning and has remained out. Since yesterday was Thanksgiving, I decided to give myself the day off to enjoy the day.

Today I will find my way to a cafe and write there. I need a scary amount of words but I have confidence that I will be able to make it if I buckle down. I estimate that I need about 20 hours of writing to get to 50,000 words.

I’m considerably slower than many people who write. I generally get about 500-750 words per hour. Michael Stackpole once said in a workshop I attended that your writing is speed is  your writing speed and that you will not be able to make a huge difference there. Where you can make a difference is by writing cleaner copy the first time. You can put your butt in the chair more often.

Chris Fox disagrees with Michael Stackpole and has a variety of techniques designed to increase writing speed. My guess is that for me the truth lies somewhere in between. I may be able to write faster if I work on it, but will probably remain one of the slower writers even as my writing speed improves. That’s ok.

It’s been almost three years since I left FedEx to write and one thing I’ve learned in that time is to accept my limitations as challenges. To recognize that I have my own advantages that others don’t and to be compassionate toward them and toward myself for the areas we struggle.

That’s my attitude toward my slow writing speed. I wish I wrote faster, but I accept that because I don’t, I have to spend more time in the chair than other people. And, I need to work on increasing my speed.  I’m very lucky that I can do that.

Tomorrow I will join my fellow writers at the Main Library to pound out the words. Win or lose, on Sunday I’ll celebrate the words I managed to write with a few friends. We’ll have Champagne and cake. This planned NaNoWriMo Finishing celebration now serves a dual purpose, not just NaNoWriMo completion but a contract. Steve recently signed a contract for an academic book. So that’s great news and an additional reason to celebrate.

I hope you are easing into the final stretch of NaNoWriMo with confidence and joy. However it’s gone, have fun in these last two days.

42,000 words