Total Words Written for Week 1: 6,398
So, my daily word count goal was 1,667. If I had been able to keep that up for the entire first week, then I would have written 11,669. Ouch. I wasn’t even close. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, though. I had some frustrating real life complications that I’m not going to go into. I could get dramatic here but in light of what is happening in the world, I just don’t want to add to the fire of negativity.
This is the reality of writing. There are events that will crop up and crush your will to sit and write. They absorb your creative brain and it starts to feel incredibly difficult to even put words to paper. I’m giving myself a pass for this first week. The important thing is that I am okay and I can push it to the back burner for a minute while I finish the next few weeks of Nanowrimo. And I can be thankful that I get to wake up for week 2 and get on with it.
Luckily, the project I’m working on doesn’t need to be 50,000 words. It only needs to hit 35k. If I can hit around 10k words/wk over the next 3 weeks, then I should still finish it by the end of November.
I am also realizing that I should have probably plotted out this book. It is the final book in my trilogy, so I figured I would be okay just following the natural direction that the series was going. What I didn’t think about was that it would eventually hit me that this book is going to end my trilogy and that feels pretty important. I walked into this first week saddled with my own expectations and only a vague setting for the third book.
After a week of writing a few pathetic 500 words here and 1000 words there each day (and a few days none at all), I have finally decided what is going to happen in the book. I have never been great at pantsing it and Nanowrimo has been no exception. With each book I write, I usually create a detailed spreadsheet that is highlighted in at least 4 different colors and then refer back to my Master Reference Guide for the duration of the series. I did something similar when I wrote the first book in the trilogy last year for Nanowrimo 2016 and got a little more relaxed with the second because I had a good idea of exactly the plot points I wanted to hit. I kind of dropped the ball with the third one.
I decided on the general plot but I didn’t do a scene by scene break down, which I usually do. So each writing session begins with me staring at a blank screen and trying to focus. How do I get each character where I want them to be for their final developments? How do I drive them in the direction of their ultimate goal? How do I make it fun for younger readers along the way?
During a few writing sessions I have had to just sit down and describe the scene in a very boring way. Example: Here I sit in a chair. It is not terribly comfortable and the socks I am wearing are not my favorite. It’s a little too cold for socks this thin but it takes so much will power to write in this chair, I know that if I get up and change my socks then I won’t sit back down and finish this blog post…
I have discovered that pantsing is so incredibly slow for me. It feels like swimming in pudding. Especially in my life right now, I just don’t have the free brain power to sit around thinking about the plot at every writing session. Maybe that is bad, I don’t know.
What I am getting at here is that next week should be smoother. I am hoping to complete 1400-1600 words a day but I am trying to be forgiving of myself for days when I only reach 500. I was not sure I would participate in Nanowrimo this year at all and sort of jumped in last minute since I haven’t finished a project since the summer. I gave myself a little time to recharge and hoped that I would be refreshed enough to blast out 2-5k words a day.
Someone pinch me next time and remind me that after long breaks from writing, you should start with a sentence, then a paragraph, then a page… As that quote from Pinterest reminds me.
A quote credited to someone I can’t find on Google.
Note to self: you don’t get to count this 800 word blog post in your total for Nanowrimo. Don’t even think about it.
I hope you guys had better luck than me in your first week. Onward to week 2.
—
0 Comments