View From the Phlipside - NaNoWriMo week 2

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

Week two from the NaNoWriMo experiment here on the Phlipside. NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month and your humble radio host decided to take a shot at the project. The goal is to write fifty thousand words of a novel in just thirty days. That's a mere sixteen hundred words or so A DAY for thirty days. It didn't seem that hard.

Week one was pretty good. We averaged about two thousand words a day which kept us well ahead of the curve. Now among the NaNoWriMo aficionados they warn about week two. Week two is where would be novelists hit the wall, run out of steam, decided that what they are writing is utter rubbish and quit. All the experts agree, you can not give in to week two. You must push through week two. In the words of Captain Peter Quincy Taggert (If you haven't seen Galaxy Quest you must) - Never Give Up, And Never Surrender!"

Yeah, like it's that easy. Week two was particularly hard for me because I would be away and unable to write for three days of the week. So I needed those two thousand words a day just to make up the ground I'd lose over the weekend. So how'd I do? Weeeeeeellllllll...... The week began pretty well. I was still nailing those two thousand word limits. OK, I did it ONCE this week. Then one day I only hit fifteen hundred. Below the minimum but still OK because I'd created a little bit of a pad. Then there was the nine hundred word day. Really not good. By the time I had to pack my bags and get away for the weekend I had only written twenty thousand words. Now in the reality of things that wasn't bad. But by Sunday morning I needed to be at the twenty five thousand word mark since it was half way. Five thou short. Not good.

I think I did come up with a solution for a problem that had been looming and I still have ideas that I need to get down into the computer. So I'm not quitting. But now I've got no choice I need to average just OVER two thousand words a day if I'm going to make the deadline.

And of course I keep reminding myself that at fifty thousand words I'm probably not done. That's a very short novel, more of a novella really, which means I'll still have plenty of writing left to do after November thirtieth comes and goes. But I don't have time to worry about that right now. Gotta write.

Call that the view from the Phlipside