NaNoWriMo, week 1 – Euphoria

The first week of NaNo has come and gone and I have had such a good time. It has been an incredibly exhilarating experience, to try and create a novel every day, working on it every morning and evening for an hour each time. The first few days I was in writer heaven, sitting on a soft comfortable cloud, surrounded by the characters I was trying to bring to life. They had faces, and a vague shape, and they smiled and waved at me and said nice things and I waved and smiled back and felt like this couldn’t have been easier. Indeed, why hadn’t I done it sooner?

At night I would go to bed thinking about the morning and how great it will be to get back to my fictional world and write the next exciting thing that happened. In the morning I finished my writing session with an idea firmly stuck in my head about the next step I wanted the story to take and would actually daydream about it throughout the day. Fortunately, with no bad consequences, although once I was almost run over by a car. Still not sure if it was me or them. Perhaps both. It has happened before.

The worlds blurred – real and fictional, and since I have never spent so much time on a writing project before, it was a strange feeling. It’s like being totally engrossed in a good book or a movie, and coming back to reality feels almost like a letdown. A bit of a challenge to manage both, but now it’s getting better.
Once, a few years ago, when I was starting running, I experienced the runner’s high. I felt happy, elated, I was beaming. It hasn’t happened since. I felt like that for the most part of the first week. I felt like Superwoman, Catwoman and whatever other super female character you could think of, all rolled in one. I was invincible, I had power, I was great. I conjured words out of the air and put them on the page, like beads on a string. They behaved. I was happy.
I managed to write at least 2000 words every day except one. And because I didn’t want to drop too far behind I made it up for it the next day.
I updated my word count twice a day. Because yes, now I do have an obsession, and also because seeing the numbers on the little widget to the right of the page really kept me going.

The second week has started and I have come back from the clouds. I still like where the writing has taken me but things are a little different. But more on that at the end of the week.
As always, your opinions and encouragements are very welcome.