Red Room Where the Writers Are

Well, Election Day is finally here.

Last night I joked to my wife that the moment this election ends, I will regain three hours a day for work.

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. With few immediate deadlines and appointments beyond a (self-imposed) daily post to at least one of the blogs I write on, it's easier than it really should be to keep reloading my favorite news sources, to see the latest polls and prognostications. Over and over again, like a brain-damaged monkey with OCD.

Thankfully, that temptation is almost gone. Because my productivity was really starting to take a hit.

Nothing important has suffered much, apart from my mouse-clicking finger. All my big projects are moving along right on track, and I'm having no problem keeping up with the duties of my part-time day job. But one writing project has suffered a bit: Nanowrimo.

Now, I haven't been neglecting it. After a slow first day, I surged ahead on the second day, only to fall behind again yesterday. I expected as much: actually, I'm farther into this new novel than I expected I would be, at 4,238 words. But that's quite a ways short of the official yardstick for Day 4: 6,667 words by the end of today. That's almost a day and a half behind schedule.

I'm not going to make that entire gap up today, so I've set myself a provisional goal of 5,000 -- that's where I should have been at the end of yesterday, and it's entirely realistic to expect myself to get there.

Once I make that count, I'm going to try to get as close as I possibly can to the day's official goal, and close that gap as much as possible!

All I have to do is concentrate. And that means turning off the WiFi, and leaving it off until 3:30, when I'll have to stop working for a very good reason: I'm going out to an election night party tonight.