Today was a good day. I finished up the latest chapter, bringing today's count up to 1052 words and making the week's total nearly 5K, fairly evenly split between my WIP and various fanfic projects. Not brilliant, maybe, but better than I've been doing. And better than I'll do this week, since we're going away again.

I declare it a good week's work.

I have had a very 'meh' sort of day today. Firstly, we've been in between projects work-wise for the last couple of days, meaning that there wasn't anything specific to work on. Always a few stupid jobs to do of course, but they tend not to help when I'm feeling 'meh'. (Incidentally, 'meh' is a very useful word. I take it to mean listless, uncaring and altogether rather pathetic, but I suppose it's open to interpretation.)

When I have a day like this, I tend to try and do other things. Play silly games, look at some funny pictures and so on, do some re-reading on writing stuff in the hope that inspiration will hit me. Anything but actual work, much to hubby's disgust. Anyway. I re-read the last chapter of my NaNo and managed to scrape a couple of paragraphs together, then got pointedly called back to work. Didn't do much though. Spent most of today playing ChainFactor and repeatedly checking my email to see if my fanfic beta had got back to me. (She hasn't, but that's okay. I did after all take approximately two and a half weeks longer to send it through than I told her I would.)

I did manage to get a bit more done this evening though, which means that for the first time since mid-December I put in some decent time on my NaNo. Well, I say decent. 827 words to be precise. It's hardly what you'd call a lot, but it's better than it was. And now I've written a bit more, carrying on isn't quite so daunting. When you stop for a while - even just a couple of weeks - the momentum dies rather rapidly. With other things it's sometimes taken me months, even years to carry on once I've taken a break from writing something. So actually, this is a good thing.

It's also good (I think) that we now have a project to actually work on. It gives me some sort of focus. Unfortunately it's a rather broad and general kind of project, since the actual specifications are impossible and the idea is for us to just put together something that does the job. It's not fun, to be honest, but hey. Hopefully I can manage to get some hours in on it. At least it's something to do.

I decided that the only way I'll keep any of my goals this year is to actually keep a record of how I do, so today I created a new spreadsheet for just that. It's very basic at the moment - weight, exercise and word count. But it means that I can tell you that I wrote another present fic and some more of the fanfic I was working on today, with a total of 1307 words for the day. Which isn't too bad considering how little I got done over Christmas. I was away from home for nearly two weeks and although I managed a few rough drafts of present fics I haven't even looked at my NaNo since I last wrote here.

My goals, incidentally, are fairly basic.

1. Finish my NaNo.
2. Write at least five days a week. I'm realistic enough to know that I'm unlikely to be able to do it every day at this point. It doesn't matter what I'm writing - just write.
3. Do NaNoWriMo 2008.
4. Read some craft books. Just because.
5. Cook from scratch more often. I enjoy it when I do, and the food is always better that way.
6. Exercise. Hubby and I got an EyeToy game for the PS2 for Christmas, and it's fantastic. It's sort of like the Nintendo Wii, except that it's a lot cheaper and you don't have to hold on to anything. The game we've got includes bowling, volleyball, assault courses and various other less active things, and it's a great way to get just a bit more exercise.
7. Work a decent number of hours a day. Since hubby and I work from home, I tend to get sidetracked quite easily, which he finds very frustrating. It means things get done much more slowly than they should do and it annoys me as well. I rather wish I could turn off the internet while I'm working, but since we're a media and IT company it's very rare that I don't need to use the internet!
8. Eat. More. Fruit. And. Veg.

I think that's about it really. They're not particularly stringent - I know that if I set a specific goal I tend to flounder about and generally won't meet it. I'm just aiming for improvement, that's all.

It worked.

I got up at 8:15 (the earliest I've seen in a few weeks), put the laundry on, got myself a cup of tea and settled down at the computer. I only actually wrote about 2000 words total today, but that was pretty good compared to my recent record, especially considering that I also copied the whole 55K over into yWriter and split it up into chapters and scenes, putting in all the characters and viewpoints so that by the time I finished I had a reasonable summary sheet. I love it - I actually know what's happened! Just going back and scanning to get scene descriptions was so useful - I realised I'd forgotten several key points. They weren't things that necessarily mean changing what I've got so far, but things that I really ought to remember from now on.

I also wrote the first antagonist PoV scene - rather late, definitely going to need to put something in earlier in the story, but it was good for a change of pace. Had brunch, washed up, wrote a bit more, played around with my character designs. I even washed everything up after dinner, so for the first time in ages the kitchen sides were entirely clear.

I also finally got round to rewriting some fanfic stuff for a friend this evening, which was a nice change; it's quite refreshing to let my mind rest in ready-to-go characters occasionally! Also since it was introspective stuff based on canon it meant that I didn't have to worry about the plot either, which is nice - means that I can just concentrate on the actual writing.

All in all, a good day. I'm definitely aiming to get up early again tomorrow - it really does just give me that extra time to write.