November, the cruelest month?

You may have noticed that my blog posts have been few and far between recently.

This is because I’m a slacker.

No, no, I’m joking.

Not that I’m NOT a slacker. That’s just not the reason I haven‘t been posting.

It’s because I’ve been trying to write a novel in thirty days for the National Novel Writing Month, and I’m trying to spend all of my writing time on that.

Oh, except for right now, when I’m writing this.

And I’m NOT using my blog as a procrastination tool, by the way! I also haven‘t been Googling random things as a procrastination tool. Okay?

Oh, who am I kidding here?

It IS because I’m a slacker.

But it’s really because writing is HARD. And I’m pretty sure I kind of stink at it.

Also I’m WAY behind.

The goal is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. That works out to 1,666 2/3 words per day.

I’m having trouble getting that far every day. That 2/3 of a word is a real killer.

I’m joking again. THAT one’s easy.

It’s the other 1,666. (Can I point out this is the devil’s number? Possibly why the organizers of this event post the daily word goal as a rounded-up 1,667.)

They have a website where it does the math for you, by the way. I can enter my daily word count, and it makes a little bar graph. So I can see PRECISELY how far behind I am.

Right now, on the 24th of November, I should have 40,000 words in my novel.

I have written 31,061.

The website estimates that at this rate I will finish on December 8th. (This date keeps moving closer and closer to December 25th, lending new meaning to the phrase “slow as Christmas.”)

Can I just point out that November is a difficult month to do this? What with all the holiday shopping and cooking of turkey and visiting of relatives?

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m making excuses.

But I DO have five kids to feed, clothe, house, and keep reasonably clean.

And, as I may have mentioned before, I am an abysmal typist. One day I should post something uncorrected so you can see just how bad I am at typing with my opposite index fingers. Except it’s likely no one would be able to read it.

But now I’m just whining, aren’t I?

Guess I just have to get back on it and try harder, right?

I lamented about my word-count problem to my husband, who gave me helpful suggestions such as, “Just put a lot of ‘verys’ in every sentence.”

At least he didn’t say, “Get back to work, you SLACKER!”