Meredith Mansfield, Author

November isn’t quite over yet, but I can firmly state that I will not have written 50,000 words by tomorrow night. More like half a NaNo (around 25,000 words). So, is that a failure or a success. Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

I was never officially doing NaNoWriMo anyway. I was using it as an opportunity to instill a little more discipline into my writing–discipline that had slipped over the last months as I’d struggled with the structure of this story. And that worked.

I was able to establish a fairly consistent writing habit. (There will always be those days when not much writing gets done, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with writing or the story at hand.) I’ve found a pace that’s challenging enough without being uncomfortable–or, hopefully, unsustainable.

I haven’t finished this first draft, but I’ve brought it up to the three-quarter mark (for the first book). And that’s pretty good in my book. If I maintain this pace, as I intend to, I should have the first draft done somewhere right around the first of the year.

I’ll call that a success.