NaNo Day Five and Counting

I've forgotten to update my progress here for the past few days but still ahead of the game on my word count; last night I reached 10,419 so I'm still very excited.

However, I'm finding the going a bit tougher than the first few days. First of all, I spent the first three days writing scenes I knew needed to occur. However, I find that my scenes are very sparse as to description and really fleshing the passages out. I know that this is normally addressed in the first revision but it does bother me.

The easy answer would be to write more description. But ~ if you take the use of magic out of my story, then I am writing as much of a historical novel as a fantasy one. In order to really flesh things out, I would have to constantly stop in the middle of my writing to look up information and I'll never stay on track with my word count if I take the time to do that.

For example, last night I was writing a scene involving my female main character, Analeah, in which while gathering herbs in the tavern garden she realized that almost all her foxglove had been pulled during the night. So, I paused the writing to look up a physical description of foxglove, then spent some time googling medieval tavern images. Thirty minutes later I was able to return to my writing.

Also vital to my story will be several battle and siege; in the short amount of time to prepare before NaNo began, I didn't have a chance to research battle tactics and strategies, weapons, etc. There is almost no way I can write even sketchy scenes without some knowledge of medieval warfare.

On the upside, I am finally getting to know my characters more and a few plot points that had me stymied are starting to resolve themselves. And I still find myself amazed by the surprises the story has handed me since I began.

I have to work until 7:00 tonight and will be exhausted after that so I don't know how much I'll get done later. I'm almost a full day ahead but I don't want to get out of the habit of writing every day.