NaNoWriMo Update (Week One)
It’s been just over a week since NaNoWriMo began. How are you doing? Are you keeping up with you word count? Well, I hope you’re doing better than me!
Week One Update
This post will be looking at my progress from November 1 to November 8. That’s a total of eight potential writing days so by this point I should have 13,333 words of my novel. So, you’re probably wondering where I’m at…
Admittedly, it’s not been smooth sailing. COVID-19 first emerged onto the scene in Canada and we went into full lockdown back at the end of March. That meant that both of my children were home, all day, every day. My wife’s job requires a lot of meetings which all became zoom meetings. Thankfully, my day job is not meeting based which meant that I could do all of my work out of office hours.
So, I would spend my days with the kids, entertaining, feeding, exercising, and attempting to educate them. Then we would have dinner and put them to bed, which became increasingly difficult as time was pretty much irrelevant at this point. So, I would start work sometime between ten and eleven at night and work until four in the morning. Then, up again at eight to start all over again. This went on until September when schools reopened…
Well, it would appear that it’s starting to catch up on me as I fell asleep at the same time as the kids on three out of eight days. And, of the remaining five days, on one day I was only able to get half a writing session in. So, I should be at 13,333 words, but I am only at 8,379 words. Based on the days that I was able to write, I am ahead of schedule. Now, I just need to catch up.
I will say one thing, and that’s I am having a lot of fun with this story and when I do get to sit down and write, the words are flowing fast and free. It’s a much more light story than I usually write and that may have something to do with it, but it could also be down to the amount of planning I did ahead of time.
Here’s how my days went.
- Nov 1 – 0 words
- Nov 2 – 1,184 words
- Nov 3 – 1,875 words
- Nov 4 – 1,792 words
- Nov 5 – 0 words
- Nov 6 – 1,738 words
- Nov 7 – 0 words
- Nov 8 – 2,150 words
Had I been able to write on those extra days, I would be well ahead of my target. It also means that if I can keep up that speed of writing, I should catch up in no time at all. Most of my sessions so far have been between one and two hours. Anyhow, I have words to write and only twenty-two days left.
Other Posts in the Series
Passed 20000 with an action scene coming!
Nice. There’s nothing like a good action scene to get the words pumping.
Wow, you’re so busy. I’m surprised you do so much. Rest is a good thing, so please rest when you can!
Watching anime ends up being my down time nowadays. I’ve never been a fan of sleep as it feels like a huge waste of time. I do it because I have to, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t.
I’ve become so used to the pattern that if I fall asleep early, I end up waking up in the early hours of the morning and have to force myself back to sleep… or I could get up and watch more anime…
Nice!
Yeah, early morning hours are prime writing time for me too – the quiet, the tiny likelihood of an interruption, it all works for me. I just get grumpy when my days and nights start to drift out of whack 😀
I find I get grumpy if I don’t my quiet time too. Even if it’s just to sit down and watch an episode of something or write up some posts (or now work on a story).
Falling asleep early wrecks me. I end up more tired and waking up a random points in the night for no reason.
Thanks for updating everyone. I left off at over 13K yesterday. There were days where I didn’t write when I worked long hours. I hope you finish strong.
Thanks. I’ve managed just under 2k words-a-day for the last couple of days so as long as I can keep that going I should close the gap. I’m enjoying the story so that helps. It’s not a genre I normally write, but I could see this turning into a series. I’m sure I’ll see you at the finish line.
As usual, however, my mind has been wandering into the future and coming up with all sorts of plans for next year. Must try to focus on the now first though.
You’re welcome. It’s amazing knowing a fellow writer as well as a NaNoWriMo participant. Keep up the good work, Lynn! I can relate to out-of-genre experiences, but they can stretch my storytelling prowess. My story doesn’t have that issue since it’s part of one of my big ongoing series, but it is going to be longer than most of the other ones barring the first book I serialized a few years ago.
Same here. I’ve got fiction goals with more books in one of my series as well as reviewing goals. That’s not even counting the ones I have for work or my offline life. I have to prioritize so many things and NaNoWriMo is a big one outside of my job life.
It’s good to have a community of like-minded people. There’s quite a few writers in the anime blogging community which is nice. Im planning on rebooting my old series next year so that should be exciting.
It’s hard trying to find the balance between writing, blogging, and all our other endeavours. But if we didn’t enjoy it we wouldn’t be pushing ourselves so hard. It’s like they say, if the thing you love becomes your job, you’ll never have a day off again… haha!
It sure is. I’ve certainly noticed that even with a few bloggers here. I hope the reboot goes well.
That’s true. Adulting is certainly a challenge in itself. Very true about hobbies and jobs. Haha!