One Fifth of the Way to a Novel

Okay, this is going to harder than I thought. Today I reached 10,421 words in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) annual push, but I'm worried. What if I don't have enough story to get me to the end of this? Fifty-thousand words is a lot, and while I initially thought I was okay, um, this is going to be hard.

According the NaNoWriMo e-mail, I will get stuck and/or frustrated about now. By week four, I should feel like yodeling. Right. And originally, I was giddy enough to believe I might actually write more than 50,000 words. Silly me. It's not running out of gas that worries me, but the story sensibly coming to an end well before that 50,000 word finish. And they warn you that some of what you write will, in fact, be crap.

What I'm aiming for is a completed manuscript, from which I can cull ideas for my next book. NaNoWriMo also claims that Stephen King does this, and I'm wondering - does he worry about crap? Probably not.

It would be more than great to commiserate with an author of King's status and success, just to know he gets frustrated, stuck, bored, or all of the above. Or not. Forty thousand words to go, but who's counting?