Day 6: Anyone have a 1,000 words to spare?

Day 6 of the NaNoWriMo is upon us. I finished off chapter 1 this morning and am pleased with my progress. This chapter is a good size, coming in at about 5,700 words. My outline calls for 12-13 chapters, so my worries over falling short in the end are easing.

The worry that isn't going anywhere is time. I haven't been keeping up to my goal of 1,725 words per day (higher since I didn't write the first day). This is officially my day 5 and by the end of the day I "should" have 8,625 words under my belt. So, even though I wrote for 1 1/2 hours this morning, I still need to shell out an entire day's worth of writing tonight just to stay on track. I can accomplish this if I really set my mind to it and leave the 360 powered off.

My real challenge starts tomorrow. Tomorrow, as far as I can tell, will leave me with nearly no time to write. I'll be working a 1/2 day, picking my brother-in-law up at noon from the airport, and driving for 3 1/2 hours to the family farm for 6 days of deer hunting. My moleskine will be coming with me, but as I discovered when starting this project, my handwriting speed seriously slows me down. Keeping up with the 10,000 words that I should be writing while hunting will be VERY difficult and I foresee myself falling quite a bit behind.

My other challenge/fear has arisen from the size of my first chapter. Although it eases my fears of falling short, it could be a sign that I may overshoot 50K by a bit. I don't necessarily see all of the remaining chapters being as large as this one but if they end up being that size, I will end up with a finished novel weighing in at roughly 76,000 words. I won't finish it by the deadline....

This, of course, isn't the end of the world. If I don't finish on time I certainly won't quit until I finish. Throwing away this much invested time would be ludicrous.

I guess only time will tell. One thing is certain. I won't be quitting.