NaNoFailMo

Wow. Time, what happened? You and I, we used to get along. A long time ago we used to be friends. We would watch bad TV shows together in the summer, lay out in the grass on campus for an impromptu afternoon nap, stay up late reading cheesy romance novels, we were the best. I thought we'd be together forever, Time. But now you've left me for some younger, hotter, less responsibility encumbered little hussy.

Day 10 of NaNo necessary word count: 15,000
Day 10 of NaNo actual word count: 5,000

For those of you big on the mathness, that's 1/3 of where I should be. Or, an utter FAIL. Now, a few things in my defense:
1) Buying secret cave
2) Started one story and decided writing of said story=impossible
3) Began new story two days ago
4) Still working on current WIP
5) Eating and sleeping still annoyingly necessary
6) As is paying bills, i.e. working

But what I am taking heart in is that in two days I've written just over 5K words. That's impressive, right? I mean, if I just play catch up for the next few days and average about 2,500 words a day, I'll be on track to totally demolish NaNoWriMo like a wimpy kid at the arcade. Or that kid in The Wizard. The snobby one with the fancy glove, not the awesome kid whose vocabulary is limited to saying California in such a darn cute way.

My lesson about NaNo so far: you can't force a poorly thought out story. It would be an utter waste of a month and 50K words for me if what I wrote was crap and I knew it as I wrote it. When I tried to write the story that wasn't working - even though I had a plan - I was word counting every 50 words. This new story I'm working on, 2K words happened in the blink of an eye. The difference? The narrative for the second story flowed much better. Moral? If your current story ain't working, don't keep forcing it just to "win" NaNo.