Nanowrimo, Day 23: Sad chapter

My characters are dealing with the death of that main character from two chapters ago. All rather sad, but necessary. I wrote another 1,700 words today.
I find it interesting that I write almost the exact same way everday. I wake up, avoid writing for about an hour. Then I write about 400 words in one big gulp. Then, I go do something else (laundry, dishes, reading, whatever) and waste another hour avoiding the story. Then I go back and do another 400 to 600 words. And then on and off for the next hour I write a paragraph here, a paragraph there, until I manage to get over 1,666. I almost always end over 1,700 words. This pattern continues almost every single day. Is my brain just geared to writing a certain number of words before a distraction is required? I remember reading that A.E. Van Vogt always wrote in 800 word chunks. He would work his characters into a problem in that many words, then go relax and think about the situation until he found a way out. I wonder if this kind of thing is common among all writers?
I'm up to 40,938, about a day and a half worth of writing ahead of where I have to be. I still would like to add some more to that, but tomorrow it's going to be hard to do that. And since I don't know if I'll be posting again, I'll just say happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans out there, and to everyone else, have a happy Nov. 24.