I am starting to get into the writing process. I am starting to be able to sit down and get down to the act of writing more quickly and easily. This has allowed me to catch up from missing 4 days of writing, and catch up to the daily writing goals. To complete the 50K one has to write an average of 1,666 words per day. At the exact middle of the month, I was at 25K words, putting me write on schedule - I've written more since then.
One issue I have is that I completely used up my entire outline at around 20K words. So I have begun writing more back story. The story I am writing is set in modern times, but has references back to events in the 1800s. I was originally going to simply make subtle references to the past, however in the interest of adding content, I decided to write the entire back story. I started with a fresh outline, and am now filling in the details. This is actually proving to be a good idea in that I have been able to refine the original story with some better, flushed out details. I may cut a lot of the backstory if I ever decide to polish and publish my novel, but the act of writing it is making the core of the story better. I am starting to see now why Tolkien wrote so many back stories for Lord Of The Rings. It helps.
Speaking of Lord Of The Rings, I have discovered that I write best while listening to an instrumental score. I have been using the complete Lord Of The Rings soundtrack on constant repeat. Combined they are 3 hours and 40(-ish) minutes long, and I've listened to it almost nine times now, so that should give you an idea how much time I've put into this so far. Pro Tip: I sometimes put rainymood.com (basically thunderstorm sounds) in the background and play music over it The combination of the two layers of sound is really effective at blocking out ambient noise. It is great for isolating oneself from this reality and immersing into the stories universe.
On the advice of another NaNoWriMo participant, I have started keeping a story bible (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Series_bible), in which I keep the details of my story for easy reference. It has made keeping track of details much easier.
So I am two weeks(-ish) in, and I am at 26.5K words. I am over the half-way mark! If all goes well, I should finish during Thanksgiving break.
Lets hope all goes well.
