Today marks the end of the first week of NaNoWriMo. If you write 1,667 words per day, which is what NaNo recommends to reach 50,000 words by November 30, then you’d be at 11,669 words today.

Today, I made it

HALFWAY TO 50K!!!

That’s right, I hit 25,000 words tonight.

TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND WORDS!

And I’m as surprised as anyone.

First, this wasn’t the story I thought I’d be writing. During Preptober, I had an entirely different story planned out (kind of planned out because we all know I’m not a true planner).

On November 1, I sat down and aimed to write a couple of hundred words because it was late and I was tired. I ended up writing over 1,700 words that were a completely different story.

When I say different story, I mean not at all related. The story I had (kind of) prepped out in October fell in the Science Fiction, possibly fantasy genre bucket. My go-to genres for reading. What I started writing on November 1 was clearly contemporary romance, maybe contemporary women’s fiction. No SciFi, definitely not fantasy (unless one believes that all romance is a fantasy, then, well, that’s for you to decide).

The writing has been going really well, and I’ve been pretty darn happy with not only my word count but what I’m writing. And then last night there was a fire in my building last night.

That’s right. An actual fire.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you might have seen my mini puzzle break post this morning where I celebrated hitting 20K words yesterday and felt lucky and thankful. Lucky because I started writing as soon as I signed off from my day job yesterday afternoon. (Thankfully, yesterday was a telework day.) When I hit 20K words, I stopped to take a mini puzzle break. I had looked at my watch and noted it was 6:30 because I wanted to sign on to Leslye Penelope’s YouTube channel at 7 to participate in her writing sprint session.

Minutes after I looked at my watch, the fire alarm went off. I evacuated but assumed, like many of my fellow residents, that someone had burned their dinner and that we’d be let back in the building rather quickly once the fire department gave the all clear.

Well, over two hours later, we were still outside. It turned out there was an actual fire in the attic above the 4th floor laundry room. And so, I didn’t get back into my apartment until nearly 9. And since my apartment is just right down the hall and across from where the fire was located, there was still a lot of noise going on for the next hour or so while the emergency clean-up crew came to try to limit the water damage. (There’s still huge fans in the hall this evening out to dry the hallway carpet.)

So I was thankful I had gotten a bit over 1,600 words down. And then double thankful that my unit wasn’t impacted.

Then, despite the chaos and upheaval of the evening, I wrote another 2,700+ words between 9:30 and 10:45. That’s right, a total of over 4,000 words for the day despite the 2+ hours outside with nothing by my keys and cell phone with a low battery.

If the fire wasn’t enough, NaNosomnia tried to take me again last night. But because it was a school night (i.e., I had to go into the office today), I made myself stay in bed and basically made myself go to sleep. Even though I had written over 4,000 words, my brain decided that 11:30pm was the perfect time to figure out the big conflict scene.

I really rolled the dice on going to sleep last night because sometimes when I think I’ll remember something the next morning, and so I don’t write it down, then next morning comes and I got nothing. But this time, I kept repeating the summed up conflict scene to myself, almost self-hypnotizing so that it both stuck in my memory and helped me fall asleep.

Tonight I wrote that scene. It isn’t exactly what I had figured out last night, but that’s okay. The words, all 3100 of them, are on the page. And those 3100, put me over the 25,000 word count!

So even though the scene isn’t quite what I had figured out last night, that’s okay because this is just a first draft. The important thing is just to get the words on the page.

And since this story is pouring out of me, today I also signed up for a story revision program that will take place in January, where I will help to the second draft. I don’t know if I’ll ever submit this story to an editor. I may, like I’ve done with everything else I’ve written, just keep it in a file and simply celebrate the fact that I wrote something. But this story does feel different. So I may let one or two people read it and see what they think. Who knows? I’m not going to worry about what comes after I finish this draft. For now, I’m focused on just getting all the words on the page.

And more importantly, I’m celebrating my achievements.