NaNo News: Day Three

So it comes to be that day three is nearly past and NaNo is definitely in full swing now, with hundreds of thousands of writers pouring their wit upon the now-not-so-blank page in their efforts to write what some of us crazies hope will become the next bestselling novel. I, in a more personal generalization, have enjoyed great success in my own little noveling world, hitting a stride of two 5k word days in a row, and working on making the third one a reality (though it's a little more difficult than the first two were, I must say. A terrible case of the stubborn scene seems to have hit me particularly hard today.) My current word count? 12,778 words, and with four hours to go until the official end of the day, I have a total of 3,009 words to slog through in order to make my self-imposed quota.

Just about an hour and a half ago, I received a comment on my last post regarding my word count and my status as a college student, and I suppose there isn't a better topic today than to give a quick rundown on my writing habits.

First off, I want to say that I am an absolute sucker for pen-and-paper writing. It has given me something to do when there's been nothing else to occupy my time, and it's probably preserved what's left of my sanity admirably. This goes for NaNo especially; while in a particularly redundant lecture, I'm able to pull out my trusty novel notebook and begin busting out passages and scenes that I can later expand upon and type into my novel-in-progress file on the computer. This alone has probably accounted for more than a half of the current word count, plain and simple.

The second thing I do is when I find any free time at all, I write. Five minutes to get to class? Rush and get there early, pull out the notebook or laptop and begin typing furiously. Personal word wars are fantastic in such short bursts. There's also a great potential for inspiration to be drawn from your courses, given the right circumstances. For instance, history courses offer a great starting point. Find a little fact from hundreds of years ago? There's a novel or short story premise, right there.

Thirdly, I find that homework isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's provided me with enough pent-up writing energy and excitement that when I'm finally able to work on my novel for the month, it's a blur of ideas rushing straight from my brain to my computer's hard drive. Okay, so maybe a little bit of finger movement is involved, but hey, it's as close to directly beaming my thoughts into a word processor as it gets, eh?

So there you have it. Writing on a short time frame doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice words when there are plenty to go around. So, what do you all do in terms of quick-writing rituals during times of having no time?