Ain't No Grave: Day 36

I think I've figured out my ideal time to write Ain't No Grave, which is between midnight and two or three in the morning.  It's probably because that's the time when people are the least likely to bug me.  Everyone else is asleep and I can focus on nothing else but the writing.

Something on my mind a lot the last few hours has been how tired I'm feeling.  It's probably the weather.  It's in the fifties right now, and I'm always sluggish when it's cold.  I've been asking myself, "Should I take the night off, or should I keep going?"  Chances are that I'll elect to continue a little later.  Again, late at night is my most productive time.  I can catch up on sleep once this first draft is done.

Then again, the fatigue could also be from pushing myself hard.  Right now, Ain't No Grave is just under 61,000 words, and I'm almost 800 words over today's goal.  While writing last month during NaNoWriMo, I thought it was desirable to push myself onward and finish the draft days or even a week ahead of schedule to show what a bad-ass I am.

It turns out that bravado might be costing me.

My daily quota is about 1,700 words, or between six and seven pages.  That's quite a leap from the three pages I tried to get in each day before NaNoWriMo.  I was so far behind at one point last month that I really wanted to catch up and surpass my goal, but that's not what writing is about.  It's not some feat of strength like a Festivus celebration.

As long as you're meeting your daily quota, you're doing fine.  There's really no point in pushing yourself over the edge if you end up so tired that you have trouble putting together a coherent sentence.