What I mean about leisurely writing:

writing a scene quickly, perhaps, telling my Internal Critic to to stuff it.

But then, taking a day, or an hour, or a week, to daydream the scene I'd just written: thinking about the emotional consequences for the characters, or maybe just imagining myself walking around in the landscape I've created, so I really get to know the characters and the place.

I've always thought of being a writer as being the lead scout of an adventure party: I run ahead a bit to see what's coming up the road, then I trot back to my characters, and get them up to speed.

And then, other times, it's like making a loaf of bread, and letting it rise in a warm quiet place for a while, before you shape the loaf and shove it in the oven.

The feeling of "OMG! I'm X-number of words behind schedule, I don't have time to ponder!" gets in the way of that, for me... Of the 5 times I've done NaNo, I've reached 50K words 4 times. But 30K of those have invariably left my main character brooding and being fearful and morose because he or she is afraid of what's outside the door, so they spend their whole story worrying about what went wrong in the past.

Of course, different writers have different psychological needs. I personally know some who use NaNo to write the first drafts of a novel they later sell, so...

I've gone back and forth on this all day. That annual event I mentioned above is actually a writing performance evening (writers reading their own works before an audience). And the deadline for submission is the 12th. Ideal maximum length for that is about 1,000 words. So as of about two hours ago, I decided to work on that, first.

And if That piece continues to spark my imagination, I'll use it as a starting point for my NaNovel...

So I've resigned on just now; my NaNo name is CapriUni, just like it is, here...