NaNoWriMo is all about the numbers

Last week, I said I was going to try NaNoWriMo this month. I thought I’d check in with a progress report.

So far it’s been different than I expected. I’d had a daily word count goal before, but it was only 1,500 words (so less than the 1,667 required for NaNo).  However, that was spread across however many projects I wanted. If I got bored or wasn’t sure where to take the story next, I could just move on to a project that was flowing better.

No such luck with NaNo. I’ve got to figure out how to write that 1,667 every day. If I’m not exactly feeling a scene or not sure where I want it to go, too bad. I have to figure it out. That’s been different.

The good news is that NaNo has been a learning experience in that I’ve been way more committed. I’ve got a journalism background, so I take deadlines seriously. The idea of getting behind on the overall big project (50k words by Nov. 30) freaks me out. So, I’ve been much more zealous about making my word count. If I fall way behind, I know it will be too hard to catch up, so I’ve been writing when I normally would call it quits. On Nov. 3, I was out all day and didn’t get home and able to sit down in front of a computer until 11:30 at night. On a normal day, I would’ve just gone to bed. But, I knew I’d be way behind on NaNo if I did. So, I sat down for a sluggish hour and got 819 words.

I wrote 300 words one day, in the morning, but then got busy and didn’t have much time to write. Again, I sat down at 10 pm, and got another thousand words. Why? Because I knew 300 words for a NaNo day just wasn’t going to cut it.  So, NaNo certainly inspires more consistency. That’s been an interesting lesson.

So far, here are my totals for the first week, Nov. 1-7

Nov. 1      2,158

Nov. 2     2,007

Nov. 3       819

Nov. 4     2,339

Nov. 5     1,828

Nov. 6     1,368

Nov. 7     2,556

——————

Total      13,075