NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month

I signed up to write the first draft of a novel = 50,000 words - during November. The first draft is not meant to be perfect. Fifty thousand words in note form saying what I propose to write and what the story is all about will do. At this stage nobody is going to read it but me. I just need to write 1,667 words every day from 1st to 30th November. Hmmm.

It started well. I did write on Friday 1st November (not 1,667 words but, hey, I'm only getting going) and proudly logged on to the NaNoWriMo website dashboard to enter my first day's word count as a milestone. Problem number one: I could not log on. Hundreds, maybe thousands of other writers were obviously trying to do the same thing at the same time and the software was having a hissy fit. I was not awarded the first virtual badge for recording my progress on day one. Boo hoo. I refuse to say I failed to achieve the badge - I tried and was thwarted. The new thing in this instance is signing up to the challenge and then starting it - I succeeded!

Perhaps if I actually write the 50,000 words I set as my target within the thirty days I can claim a second new thing for this Seventy before 70 challenge. (Don't hold your breath.)

Using the blog as a warm-up exercise, to start the creative juices fkowing before I turn to the novel, has meant that I did far more blogging in November than in both September and October together. That has to be a win.

Update 30th November 2024

The graph shows the number of words written I logged each day. Some days I wrote none at all, that's why the graph flattens out. Clearly I didn't reach the 50,000 word goal.

Excuses:

I was ill, lacking energy, enthusiasm, everything I needed to motivate me and keep me on track. The doctor said what I had was viral, didn't need antibiotics and I should keep warm and drink plenty of fluids. That is how spent much of November. I could have won a coughing competition but there wasn't one. There were no prizes for writing a complete novel within 30 days either, although there would have been a virtual certificate to say I had "won NaNoWriMo" if I had reached 50,000 words. That was the picture I would have liked to display on this page but, hey ho, I've learned a lot about my writing style, such as, I can't keep going for thousands of words on a first draft without stopping to edit what I wrote earlier. It's the editing that puts me in the mood for writing the next part. Hundreds of new words in a day provide a better target for me than thousands of words.

On the plus side:

I have written one third of my novel's first draft. It includes many notes and questions, such as, who needs to talk to whom to take the action from the last scene to the next one? However, the shape of the narrative is becoming clearer and I can carry on when November has ended.

I'm a tortoise, not a hare.

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