30 Days 50,000 Words

51,354 to be exact. I didn't get a cool banner like the one above. I didn't register as such or do the whole thing properly. My goal was to write 50,000 words between November the 1st and November the 30th and I accomplished that.

It wound up being over two concepts. One was Shattered Chaos and I actually managed to complete that on the 27th. It came in at over 90,000 words, which was a surprise, because there were times prior to doing Nanowrimo that I did wonder if it would break the 70,000 word barrier.

How was the experience? It was kind of odd to be totally honest.

I regularly bang out at least 1,000 words a day and I've been doing that for some time now, so it wasn't really a case of making myself write on a daily basis, which I think many people who go in for Nanowrimo are trying to do, it was more about making daily word count.

I did a business course for a couple of weeks in November and that meant my daily counts weren't what they needed to be for those weeks, so there were a few mammoth writing sessions on the weekends and a couple of nights to help me hit the 50,000 word target.

When I finished the novel I went onto a short story which is really concepts for an urban fantasy idea called Foxwood that I'd like to explore. Of course I also need to edit Shattered Chaos.

That's one thing about Nanowrimo, when you know you have to hit a certain number of words you focus on that and you tend to write a lot of extraneous material. I'll lose a few thousand for sure from what I did during Nanowrimo when I go through the book and edit it properly.

I was glad I did it, even though there were times I stressed a little about making word count and that's something I've never really done before.

It was fun.

Having said that I'm back to my 1,000 words now and feel happy about that.

Putting in the hard yards

It's rather odd to illustrate a post about Nanowrimo with a weightlifter when the heaviest thing I'm lifting is a laptop, but this week has been a little like that.

I don't typically pound out huge word counts. I tend to do 1,000 words a day, or 2,000 on a good day.

The jump from 1,000 or so words a day to at least 1,700 was a bit of a culture shock and then the problem I had last week with the course taking up the better part of my writing time continued this week.

For one reason or another I seemed to get home later too, so the only real writing time I got was in the morning before I left. I found I was able to get about 500 words done in short order, but not much more. This put me right behind the 8 ball until I got some clear time on Wednesday night and managed to pound out over 3,000 words.

I still think I'm behind, but the weekends let me do some big word counts and I've got a few free days at the end of the month when the course ends. I hope to be able to really put the foot down then.

I think I can hit the target, but it's going to be a near run thing. Next week I hope to post about my success and give my thoughts on the whole experience.

I'll finish this up with a weekly word count: 11954. That's a little higher than I expected and makes me feel a whole lot better about the whole thing.

Juggling

There's an oft quoted saying about the plans of mice and men. I don't actually know if mice do plan, but if they do their plans often probably do go awry. Initially I was cruising on Nanowrimo. I had some really good figures in the first week.

Then I started a two week business course. Now that takes away from my writing time. I still think I can hit the target. It just may be harder than I originally thought.

I can manage to get some writing time in at the end of each day, but fitting the course in, time to eat and relax, sleep and do all the other things that one does in life makes 1700 words a day very tricky.

This means I kind of have to juggle things around a bit.

Compared to last week this week's figures look pretty ordinary. The weekly total this time is 8869.

Added to last week that makes 21721.

That's not going to get me to 50,000 words by the end of the month.

However I have plenty of time on the weekends. If I write like a bat out of hell over the weekend to make up the short fall I may be able to do this.

At the very least I think I will finish Shattered Chaos, so even if I don't make my target I will still accomplish something of note.

Wish me luck as I try juggling as fast as I can.

Target

This is my week one of Nanowrimo post.

As I said earlier I'd never done this properly before and I guess in many ways I'm not doing that this time, it's just sort of a personal initiative to see if I can hit 50,000 words in the 30 day time period allotted to the challenge.

I set myself a personal target of 1700 words a day because that's basically what I feel will allow me to hit the target and with a bit of space to spare or maybe a day or two off along the way.

I think it's important when doing something like this to have a daily target and not just write yourself into the ground on day one or the first week then have a big let down the next day or week. It's also important to make this an achievable target for you. 1700 words is a lot, no really it is, it doesn't sound like it when you hear about authors hitting these huge word counts daily, but if you don't do it all the time it is.

When I first got into the habit of writing daily I had a target of 100 words a day and I gradually built it up until 1000 a day wasn't that big a deal for me. 1700 is a big jump, but I can handle it. However I can only do that because I was regularly into the habit of knocking out at least 1000 per day.

If you're going into Nanowrimo and you don't write regularly I think it would be a hard ask.

I missed one day due to Melbourne Cup and wound up doing double the next day. Yesterday I just decided to do 2500 to hit a certain amount of words in Shattered Chaos (it's over 60,000 now). Doing Nanowrimo is really increasing it's word count rapidly and while a lot will get edited out, it's powering along now, that extra 700 words does make a huge difference.

So, I'll give my stats now: for the week I hit 12,852 words. That's ahead of the game, so I may be able to make the target with some room to spare at the end.

Off to write some more.

Nanowrimo

Being as today is the first of November I thought this was the ideal time to make this post.

Following writers and members of sites and forums where writers hang out tends to make one aware of Nanowrimo, which for those who don't know stands for National Novel Writing Month.

This initiative started some years ago and the object of it is to write 50,000 words, a novel length work within a month. That month being November.

Nanowrimo started in the norther hemisphere and to hold the 'contest' in November makes perfect sense. It's the month before the Christmas rush of December and when the weather in the northern hemisphere starts to turn, so more time is likely to spent enjoying the great indoors.

It works a little differently in the southern hemisphere. November is when out weather begins to get good, and a lot of summer sports have either just started or about to. It's still possible to do it, though. You just have organise your schedule a little differently.

Nanowrimo has spawned a few best sellers. Both Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus began their lives as Nanowrimo projects.

I've never done the proper Nanowrimo as such and I probably won't do it this year, but I am going to attempt to hit the 50,000 word mark within a month.

I credit the idea of Nanowrimo as being what got me into the habit of writing daily and building a daily word count. I started off small, very small. I aimed to do at least 100 words a day and then increased it by 100 each month. I capped off at 1,000 per day.

To hit the Nanowrimo target you need to write 1666.6 recurring words a day. I'm not actually sure how you get .6 of a word, although some of the made up words I use in Realmspace may qualify, so you just kind of round it up and aim for 1,667 words per day.

Other people have said that one of the problems with this is when you lose a day or two and have to try and catch up. That could be an issue for me, although I'll do what I can to not let it happen. I tend to take weekends off, but that will go by the wayside for this month at least.

Why I said I won't be doing an actual Nanowrimo is that while I am aiming for 50,000 words in the month they won't all be in the one novel.

Realmspace came out at roughly 80,000 words and the sequel: Music and Mayhem, was 75,000 words. I'm now 47,000 words (did 1709 today on the first day of Nanowrimo) into the 3rd Realmspace book: Shattered Chaos, and that's probably going to come out near 80,000 words as well.

Wait! You haven't even got an agent for Realmspace and you're writing the 3rd book in the series? Isn't that a little risky? Possibly, and more probably a waste of time if I can't get Realmspace off the ground. However, yes there had to be a however in there, each book is self contained. There's no cliffhanger endings at the end of each book. No need to read on unless you really want to, and they have a main character, a concept and some settings in common.

I don't know that I ever intended to write more than one book, but once I started Realmspace and got a way into it I just knew there were way more ideas than I could ever fit into one book. So for me it was logical that once I completed the first one, I would start to write a second one and the third one was already writing itself once I got through the second one.

I could write a fourth, but I think after completing 3 of them is a good time to take a break. So when I finish that I'll work on some short stories. I have an incomplete one which serves as background for another concept the bunny bit me with some time ago and has managed to dredge up more recently. I can finish that and start the new idea, which is an urban fantasy concept that at this stage I call Foxwood, which Bronwen keeps whispering seductively in my ear about.

Posts may be a little sparse in November as I try to make my daily word count, but I will try and keep people updated on my progress as regards that score.