Thoughts after 3 weeks of NaNo: Is it December yet?

     We are now into week four of NaNoWriMo and I am not exaggerating when I say I am exhausted. Utterly and completely. I can see why some people might slow down or even throw in the towel at this point.
     I think the main problem I'm having now is residual tiredness. At the beginning of November it was very easy to be excited and energized to write like crazy. During week 2 some of that initial excitement started to wear thin, but it was still there. During week 3 I was thinking: wow, am I still doing this? My brain feels jumbled and my fingers are tired from typing, which means I'm making a lot more typos than I did initially. I remember thinking during week one that I should push myself to write this much all the time. Now I'm like, uh, no way. Even I'm not that insane.
     I think my writing has gotten a little worse than it was in early November. Part of that is due to simply being tired, the other part is due to the fact that the middle of the story is the hardest, at least in this case. I had a rough outline of my story in my head. I knew how it was going to start and what was going to happen at the end. The problem is figuring out the steps to take to get from the beginning to the end. What do I write for all the those middle scenes? I was cringing during the writing of some of those scenes, but in keeping with NaNo tradition, I just kept writing.
     Now, I've gone way past 50,000 words, which is really awesome. I'm very proud of myself. That is the win, but it doesn't feel quite right to me unless I actually finish a draft. This is because I'm a little insane and a bit of a workaholic when it comes to writing. But the good news is, this is totally doable for me. I'm a little more than 3 quarters of the way through my draft, so if I keep up my current rate then I should finish by the 30th. Not only that, but this will be the first time I've written a draft that isn't unreasonably long. Third time's a charm I guess. I'm very excited, but I also can't wait for this to be over so my poor brain and my poor tired fingers can take a break.

     Current word count: 74, 868

Good luck to everyone else! Happy reading and writing!