NaNoWriMo: Week 1

 NaNoWriMo started on Tuesday. I was prepared. I had my novel plotted, all the character profiles done, world building complete. I’d even written to 30000 words and was ready to begin a new chapter in a convenient place so I knew exactly where to begin counting the NaNo words. The NaNo chapters are labelled differently so I don’t lose track of where I began. I’d also created a table so that I wasn’t constantly straining to write 1667 words every single day because my life doesn’t work like that.

So, how did I go?

Day 1: 1748 words
Day 2: 3242 words
On track, ahead of schedule.
Day 3: A very long day at work. I kept falling asleep as I typed. 169 words. Still on schedule.
Day 4: Still the falling asleep problem: 411 words. I’m behind.
Day 5: Today. I’m out of town catching up with friends, socialising, eating, drinking, having fun. No writing yet. Perhaps none at all today.

Where to from here? I’ll spend a couple of hours catching up with things in the house, then I’ll go to the nearest library and write for a while. With luck, I’ll catch up the shortfall and be back on track.

That’s one of the benefits of the table I created. I no longer feel guilty or anxious if I don’t write 1667 words in a day. As long as I make one of the targets on my table, I’m fine. The table gets adjusted too, so it remains at a total of 50000 words.

That’s the ten minutes I allocated to type this up. I’m going back to the champagne and company now (both excellent). I’ll be back next week with another NaNo update, and perhaps an excerpt from the book I’m writing.

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