NaNoWriMo Status Day 1
NaNoWriMo has officially begun!
If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a challenge many authors and writers undertake to draft an entire manuscript during November. Most try for 30,000 to 50,000 words. I’m insanely shooting for 80,000 to 85,000 because the length of the first draft of my last manuscript was 85,000 words.
Hey, what’s life without a wee bit o’ challenge, right?
Because this is something so different, I’ve decided to post daily throughout the month. However, I plan to send only this first notice, then maybe a mid-month and end of month update, to my email list. I won’t be sending daily emails since those who signed up did so expecting no more than a few posts per month, not daily messages, and I don’t want to spam people. Besides, I haven’t fully set up the blog and figured out how to add sharing buttons, and how to get it into people’s RSS feeds, and all that yet anyway. So, to those on my email list, or anyone else really, if you want to follow my progress, please feel free to visit this blog daily.
With all that said, let’s get to the meat of the thing, shall we?
Though I’m shooting for a significantly longer manuscript, I did give myself a little head start. I wrote the first 12,478 words prior to today. Keeping that in mind, here’s my current status after Day 1:
| Total Word Goal | Daily Word Goal | Total Chapter Goal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 80,000 - 85,000 | 2,600 - 2,800 | 24-28 |
| November 1st | 15,162 | 2,684 | 4 |
And eking out those 2,684 words was a HUGE challenge today. Holy crap, that was hard. But, part of my problem was that I went back and decided to edit Chapters 1 and 3. Definitely a mistake. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I improved them. But, improving them took time and did little to add to my word count.
I’m not going to be able to write this one like I did my last - writing, then editing, then writing, then editing. That type of iterative process is simply not going to work with this deadline. It’s going to have to be more of a straight write-through-to-the-end approach. Fingers crossed that I’m able to do that. It’s not my style, so it’s going to be difficult.
