940 words per hour?

As a little test, I just spent the last hour writing. In that hour, I wrote 940 words. At that rate, I would need to write for 53.19 hours to reach 50,000 words. In otherwords, I could write for two hours a day for 27 days, or 3 hours a day for 18 days. That almost seems do-able.

How much time is realisticly available?...excluding Thanksgiving and the following day, and the bridesmaid-prep day, there would be 19 weekdays on which to write. Again excluding Thanksgiving and the wedding, there are 5 available weekend days. That's a total of 24 days. Now, one of those days includes a baby shower, and I'd like to include a little celebration of my own birth too, so let's knock off two days. Assuming something unexpected would come up at least once or twice, I'll knock off two more days for a good measure. We're back to 20 days of writing. At 20 days, each day would need to yield 2,500 words. Gah.

At the 940 words an hour rate, that could work. But, chances are slim that I could keep up that sort of pace. The problem again comes back to plot and story. Tonight, I just completly wrote the first thing that came into my head. It's not really a story, just sort of some rambling about two girls walking to the bar, with a little bit of background on the characters. When I need a name or detail, I just went with the first thing that occured to me. That may not be the best plan for a novel. Would three hours in front of a computer yield three hours of steady writing? Impossible. Is two hours out of three overly optimistic?

The math is scaring me off.

I need a plot.

So, I'm thinking about writing a novel next month. NaNoWriMo. The goal is a 50,000 word novel, created entirely in November. If I wrote every day, I'd need to churn out about 1,700 words a day. Given that I wouldn't really do it everyday (e.g. on the days I put in 12-14 hours at work, wear a bridesmaid dress, give thanks for turkey, or otherwise make merry...)I figure my daily goal would have to be closer to 2,500 words.

That's alot of words, my friend. A lot of words.

Every week at work I write about 40 pages, give or take. I wonder how many words that is? Too bad they're confidential.

The really big worry: Novels need plots. Sans plot, 50,000 is even longer.

TinFoil passed the bar.

Who am I kidding? Tin Foil went into the bar.
Several bars, if I must be completely frank.