Thoughts on NaNo, week two

Almost 27k words here, which is about a thousand above my goal of 2k/day. I decided I would really like to get closer to 65k or even 70k by the end of the month, so that I'm closing in on the ending--I know from last year that once the social pressure is over, it's easy to let up a lot on the writing pace. Last year I only needed to get another 15k or 20k done to wrap up the story, and it took me through the first of the year. This year's novel is likely to be at least 10k longer, if not 20k, so I don't want to let the final chapters take me too long.

I'm pleased with how well the story seems to be going. Maybe I'll come back to this in a few months and realize I should have been more critical with myself as I went along, but I'm into it at the moment. In some ways the story's been brewing in my head for over a year, but there's still much I had no idea about, so it's nice to see those things coming together.

I've always felt that the biggest threat to writing a novel (whether in a month for NaNo or over 2 1/2 years like the first novel I wrote) is doubt--once you let doubt in, it can so easily derail the whole process. When I look at writer friends who fizzled out in NaNo last year or this year or outside of NaNo, losing confidence in the product seems to come up in what they say more than any other factor. I'm a strong believer in finishing a project once it's begun. There are definitely times to question a project, but that's not (for the most part) at this point. And there are projects where you get to a point that you really do need to step away for a while instead of just pressing ahead, but those are the exceptions. So while I may not be fully able to silence the inner editor that makes me go back and quick change a few wordings here and there or correct for an awkward sentence, I've so far been able to avoid entertaining any more serious questionings about the story as a whole. Which is a very good thing for getting the first draft down in a way that I'm happy with.