NaNoWriMo 2012, Day 26 — I Win!

I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)

NaNoWriMo Progress: Magic, Psi, and Necromancy for Normals
	Actual	Required
Progress
New Words Today	1688	1667
Daily Average	1967	1667
Remaining Req’d Daily Avg	0	1667
Expected Total	50000	50000

Notes:

• Edit: Right after I entered this I noticed that the little progress bar images are down at the moment, so the total words as of midnight was 51,149.
• As you may have gathered from the subtle clues I left, I have won NaNoWriMo as of today. Winning simply means that I accomplished the goal of writing 50,000 words or more in 30 days or less. To me, it also means I accomplished my personal goal of defining many aspects of my world’s magic so that as I write forward, I have a much better idea what’s going on with magic, how it works, what its limitations are, how common it is, etc. All the stuff that I sort of had in my head, but which are now on “paper,” as it were. I want to get to writing the first novel right away. But I’m not going to right away.
• The reasons I’m not going to are three.
  1. November ain’t over, yet. The fat lady hasn’t even inhaled. I will finish out the month, still trying to write more than 1667 words each day, just because I want to. Plus, there are whole chapters that are blank, such as the one about mages. Why can’t I make myself write it?
  2. I want to let things percolate for a short while before I roll my sleeves up and dig in. I have to plot out the novel, for one thing, and add in some juicy subplots. I have one or two in mind that I think are going to be quite torturous for my main characters. :)
  3. I have a Viable Paradise story to edit and submit, as well as a crap-ton of other stories that I did for last year’s NaNoWriMo that need editing and submitting. My goal for December is to finish at least one (the VP story) and get it out the door. And possibly another one, but December is busy for me, so I will stick with just saying one. Writing goals and I are old enemies, but I’m going to try to stick with this one.

  Once I get that out of the way, I will definitely start on the first novel (it’s actually a rewrite, but it’s being repositioned, so all the world-introduction has to be added, etc.).

• The stuff I looked up today is pretty eclectic. How hormones work (including a lovely segment on last week’s Radio Lab that was an unexpected bonus that gave me the missing piece of how magic works at a genetic level; thanks Robert and Jad!), sky marshals, and ancient American civilizations (Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayans, Incas, etc.). Today also was great because during lunch while I was writing about magic in security and privacy, I realized why one of my characters has an assumed identity. It all ties up so pretty. :)