I just want to take a moment to thank Jay for holding down the fort here @nerdtotheword while I took some personal time off. I am happy to be back and raring to go with all sorts of new projects. The one I will be sharing about for the rest of November is National Novel Writing Month, otherwise referred to as: NaNoWriMo. This is my FIRST year participating in this event!
If you haven’t heard of NaNo yet, let me give you a brief summary. The concept is pretty simple, you have 30 days (November 1-30) to write a 50,000 word novel. The website: nanowrimo.org has a ton of resources, statistics, and encouragements to get you and keep you motivated throughout the month. You can connect to other writers in your region and they have events call “write-ins” where you meet and just write together, taking a normally solo activity and bring in a social aspect to it. How cool right?
Right now I am working with a NaNo team online from the University I graduated from last year (SNHU). We spent half our day encouraging each other, placing bets on how much coffee one of our friends can consume in a single day. I’m pretty sure she could rival Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls…. and that is saying something. We had a few “Word Wars” which is basically taking 10, 15, 20, 30 minute sessions to write as much as we can and then compare how we did. I was only able to participate in the 10 minute one (my first one). I wrote 194 words. There is so much room to grow.
In order to meet the 50,000 word requirement you have write an average of 1667 words a day. I’ve done writing challenges in the past with goals of 10,000 words in a month. Nothing of this caliber. It was time to challenge myself.
Let’s go back to Halloween: I had 13 chapter’s outlined and was barely halfway to my goal and I was suffering writers block. I was frustrated and I didn’t know what to do. I grabbed my notebook around 6pm, took it out to the living room away from my computer (let’s be honest, it was to get me off Facebook). I wrote for 3.5 hours and before I knew it, I had my entire novel outlined with 3 hours until NaNo was to begin in my region! I had my snacks and drinks set up to start exactly at midnight. I was prepared and I was on track. As you can bet, I was feeling pretty awesome.
At 11:57pm my husband wanted to watch a show. He got an unnecessary grumpy side of me, but I love spending time with him so much so we watched an episode of “Hostages” on Netflix. By the time it was over, my cold medicine had fully kicked in, so instead of writing I ended up just going to bed. I was mad at myself and disappointed. My dreams reflected my mood.
I was fully awake by 9:30am and decided to put the night before behind me. It was still day one and I could do this. I wrote for nearly two hours and had written a little more than 2100 words. I had already exceeded the daily goal, and I was happy; however, I am admitted overachiever. I was so excited that I wanted to write more. Unfortunately, I still had real life responsibilities to take care of.
I didn’t get back home until after 4pm. What do I do as soon as I get home? Watch TV of course. I got another hour in this past evening and I finished my NaNo write for day one at 3,225 words! I celebrated by watching another episode with my husband and then we watched Jerry MaGuire. I am here now talking to you when I should either be sleeping or working on my NaNo project.
Until tomorrow.
~Kay
Nerd To The Word 