Since we’re halfway through the month, I thought now would be a good time to check in and chat about how I’m doing with NaNoWriMo this month.
Full disclosure, I wrote this on the 13th after I’d already done my words for the day so I could focus on my writing and other life things between then and this post going up. If you want to find out where I am right now, you can find my profile here.
Let’s get the big one out of the way first. As of time of writing this, my word count is sitting at 26,533 words which means I’m 4,866 words ahead of schedule.
I went into the month strong, writing over 3,000 words on both day 1 and 2. I’ve dropped down to being more around the 1600-2000 word mark per day since, but I’m still extremely happy with that. I need to write about 1380 words per day to finish on time which I think is manageable at this point.
How am I actually feeling about the novel though? I’ve definitely hit that mid-month rough patch. For the last three or four days, making my word count goals has been a slog. I’ve really, really pushed myself to hit my par every single day because I know if I miss it once, it’ll send me on a slippery slope.
Most of the issue is because I haven’t been writing in order. I never write any novels in order, at least not in the first draft stage—I need to jump around to whatever scene is grabbing my attention at that moment. I know I’d never have been able to write this much any other way, but it does mean that my document is an absolute mess. There are scenes in the wrong and probably a good amount of things that need to be cut, but that is a problem for December.
My plan for the rest of the month is to keep going until I hit that 50k. Depending on when I reach that, I might start reorganising things but I want to make the word count before I do that. If I’m on a roll, I’ll keep writing beyond the 50k because this book is definitely not going to be done by then. But it’ll on depend on how the rest of the month goes.
How are you doing with your NaNoWriMo projects? Are you on track to finish by the end of the month?
Earl Grey Books 