I also made the poor choice to spend a week out of town thinking it would help my writing.  Worst. Choice. Ever.  

I'm interested in seeing what other people run into.

Having RL intervene as soon as I got started was my biggest challenge.

When my MIL suffered a TIA (mini-stroke) on 11/02, I instantly lost two days of meaningful writing. Instead, I was worrying and hanging around the hospital and so on. There followed a few more days of more intensive care-taking than usual while she recovered her strength and mobility.

From then, I was forcing myself - flogging my backside as it were - to drive forward and try to catch up. After a few days of that, I was so focused on the word count I lost interest in the story - so I quit.

I'm still writing, back to a book I've played around with for several years ('In A Green & Shady Place'). I hope to have it in publishable form in the next couple of months. Then, I'll turn my attentions to another story I have in about the same state as this one ('The Weight of Air'). From there, I have yet another one waiting in the wings ('Matters of Friendship'). Then another ('Genevieve's Piano') and my four-book series ('Elizabeth's Braid') and the sequel to 'Laurentina's Lessons'... Plenty of fodder and a determined, directed eye for a change.

Lucy;

Oh, nothing bad happened at all-- It was a bunch of super distractions from my writing while being with family.  I did manage to get my 50k words but didn't finish my story so that's frustrating.  (I really want to try to get this monster ready to pitch to this agent I'd really 

PhilippaS -- I hope everything with your MIL is alright.  Stress is never a good combination when trying to write.   Sounds like you have a lot of work going on!  How is it going?

Congratulations on hitting the NaNo mark, Diana! That's fantastic!

Now you can settle in, finish the story at your own pace and then start editing. That is quite an accomplishment in and of itself.

Thanks for asking about MIL on this end. All is about as well as to be expected with an 86-yo in poor health. She's better than she was, so that's something.

I am making forward progress on 'Shady' - about halfway through at this point.

 I am DETERMINED to stop mucking about with multiple stories at the same time. It's how I'd always read - three or four or five books all going at the same time. I never thought I'd do the same with my writing!

If I keep going as I've been, I should be "finished" by the end of December. Unfortunately, as I've discovered as I've prepped a story I thought was "finished" to be posted on WriteOn, it's not finished. I keep finding little tweaks. It's annoying.

A clear case of "good enough" never is.

Whew! Nano is finally over.

I thought the hardest part was dealing with Thanksgiving right at the end of the month! I see that Thanksgiving will be a tiny bit earlier next year. I feel like having more days at the end of November would really help the cause!

This was my first attempt at NaNo after I'd procrastinated about it for the last few years, so even deciding to give it a go was pretty hard. LOL. That said I made things easier for my freshman year by deciding to focus on a manuscript I'd already started. While this might seem as a bit of a cheat, I knew I'd be out of town for a few days, so would be able to add the content of the prewritten chapters into my NaNo count on those days. You gotta cut the newbies some slack, right?

Anyway, as the month progressed I found that I could barely stop writing! I literally had to force myself to take Thanksgiving off and just about kept my promise to not either hand-write any notes or to type anything anywhere near related to the novel. So, how did I do? By the end of the month I'd amassed an incredible 57,000 words! Yep, I'm proud to say that even without the chapters I already had, that I blasted through and won NaNo as a freshman!