Earl Grey Books

For NaNoWriMo this year, I decided I’d do this weekly updates/check-in’s mostly so I could look back at the end of the month and see how I felt about everything and what worked for me and what didn’t. I’ll talk more about what I plan to do with all of that at the end of November, but let’s get into week one.

November 1st | 1811 words

I spent a few hours today sprinting with my friend, Mel—we’re hosting live sprints every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the month on our booktube channels (you can find mine here, and Mel’s here!) I probably would’ve gone on writing, but it was a public holiday here and I wanted to spend time with my partner instead.

November 2nd | 409 words

This was not the word count I was hoping for today, but I had to head into work though I don’t usually work Wednesdays so I don’t want to be too hard on myself for that. I did swing by the State Library of Victoria afterwards to sit and write, but I was just exhausted and only managed to get those 400 words out. I have sprints again tomorrow so I’m okay with this being all for today.

November 3rd | 1786 words

I definitely felt better about my word count today, though I had been hoping to get 2k. I got pretty close those so I can’t complain too much. I wrote about 1.3k on sprints with Mel, and the rest a little later. I spent some of my time cleaning my office a little, which is primarily where I write, so that it just feels a little less chaotic in there.

November 4th | 263 words

Fridays are my usual work days so I knew I wouldn’t get much done today. I managed to write these words while dinner was cooking, so I’m happy I got anything done at all.

November 5th | 372 words & November 6th | 386 words

I knew going into November that I wouldn’t get much writing done on the weekends so the fact I still managed to write over 370 words both days was honestly pretty good. I’m running about 5k behind the NaNo goal, but I know I’ll manage to get over 1000 done on both Tuesday & Thursday so I’ll hopefully catch up a bit there.

November 7th | 1170 words

I really tried to push myself to get to the 1k word mark today so I could immerse myself back in the story and set up a few scenes before sprinting tomorrow. I started working on some of the really emotional scenes today which definitely helped getting the words down and I’ll hopefully get to finish them tomorrow.

Week 1 Wrap-Up | 6197 words total

Even though I’m about 5.4k words behind, I’m still really proud that I managed to get all of this done. It’s been over a year since I wrote consistently like this so I’m just happy to be getting things down. I’m hoping to have a couple of big word count days over the next week so that I can catch up a little.

My manuscript is also an absolute mess right now, so if I can manage to spend some time writing the little in-between scenes to join the things I already have together that would be amazing too. But we’ll see how I go with that.