Is it Possible?

Some people struggle with NaNoWriMo because they just can’t write every day or they don’t write enough words to make the daily word count goal of 1667 words per day. If they fall behind, they think it’s practically impossible to write like a fiend and get back on track.

Is it possible to win NaNo when you are that far behind?

Well, let me tell you about my NaNo experience last month. In previous posts, I mentioned how this year, NaNo was harder for me and I was behind in my daily word goal. At one point, I was so far behind that if I did not have marathon writing days, there would be no way that I would cross the 50K finish line by November 30. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t hit 50K until mid-to-late December. Yikes!

My goal was to write 51,000 words, which comes out to 1700 words a day.

This is what my daily word count for the month of November looked like (brace yourself, it isn’t very pretty):

As you can see, there were 7 days out of the month that I had written no words! That’s right! That adds up to a full week of no writing. In a month of only 30 days, only writing for 23 days puts me at a great disadvantage.

Also, you can see that there were 5 days where I wrote less than 100 words. You like that day where I only wrote 13 words on November 8? Yeah, I had a holy crap moment myself. I was very productive that day.

I was only ahead of my word count 6 days out of the entire month. The highest number of words ahead of my writing goal was only 2011 words (November 11).

There was never a time where I was actually “on” target. That means that there were 24 days where I was below my writing goal.

Check out November 22. I was 9,212 words behind that day. Nine THOUSAND words behind. That’s enough to make anyone cry buckets and buckets and then quit on the spot. I just sighed, muttered about what a stupid idiot I was to let myself get that far behind and then had two marathon writing days back to back (November 23 and 24) where I wrote 12,726 words! HOLY SMOKES! I had never written that much in my life! That definitely beat out my previous record (on November 9 and 10 of this year) when I wrote 10,061 in two days.

You would have thought that I would have learned my lesson by then after that frenzied writing, but no, I wrote ZERO words the next two days (November 25 and 26). By November 28, I was 5707 words behind my goal. I was only up to 41,893 words by that day. Now that was really cutting it close. I couldn’t afford any more unproductive writing time. I only had two days to reach 51,000 words (or 50,000 if I decided I just could not write the extra 1,000).

I had to buckle down and I managed to squeeze out 5012 words on November 29 and 4931 words on November 30 (9,943 words in two days). I was thinking about adding another 164 words to make it an even 52,000 but by 11:20 that night, I was done. I had finally validated my novel and I just wanted to go to sleep. Thank goodness it ended on the weekend because I was not moving the next day.

So, look over my graph again. Do you see how many unproductive days I really had? Do you see how many days where I didn’t even make my daily word goal of 1700 words, let alone the NaNo daily word goal of 1667 words?

But I trudged along and pushed myself to finish. I had a strong motivator inside of me to hit that 51,000 word goal by November 30. And I did it!

So yes, it IS possible to fall almost 10,000 words behind and STILL win NaNo. Don’t let a few thousand words drag you down. Just sit at that computer (or with that notebook and pen/pencil) and write as if you really want it. Because if you really want it, there is nothing that should stop you from reaching that 50,000 word goal!

Until next time ~

Camp NaNoWriMo Results

CAMP NaNoWriMo
RESULTS
April and July

Holy Guacamole!

I have been neglecting my blog this summer!

Well, I must give you all an update on my Camp NaNoWriMo challenge. I originally set my goal for 50,000 words and I tried my best to reach that goal. But, somehow I didn’t think I could make it so I reset my goal (the best part about Camo NaNo is that you can set your own goal and change it throughout the month) to 40,000 words.

I actually surpassed that goal and ended the April Camp with 45,631 words. Woo hoo!

Then, I decided to try for the July Camp NaNo. I wasn’t sure how many words I needed to write so I decided on a low number: 10,000 words. Since it was the summer and school went really, really late this year (we got out of school almost at the very end of June), I didn’t want to work that hard. I ended up with 15,408 words (over my goal again!).

So, now it’s August and I’m taking a writing break so I can enjoy the warm sunshine on my face as I leisurely walk around outside, smelling the fragrant flowers wafting through the air. I just love the lazy days of summer.    :)

How about you? Do you take writing breaks during the summer or a certain time during the year?

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Until next time ~   

What I Learned From NaNoWriMo

Before I had embarked on this crazy journey of attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days, I thought that it was sheer madness. I mean, who would be that insane to forgo their lives, their free time, their jobs, outside forms of entertainment, reading other books and their insanity for 30 days?! And how would a person even get anywhere near 50K words in 30 days??

Last year, I thought it was impossible so I didn't even try it. I thought that those people were just nuts.

This year was different. I thought, "Why not? What have I got to lose?"

So, this is what I learned from National Novel Writing Month:

1. It is possible to start the contest with only having the main character's name and the tiniest idea of what the story was going to entail.

2. If my story starting veering away from my plot idea, I didn't care! I had no worries and no stress about the story flowing in any particular direction. If my main character wanted to fall down, I let her fall with the biggest bang possible.

3. Having a specific word count for the day made writing much easier.

4. Having the graphs and widgets available on the NaNoWriMo website provided a great visual and total awareness of how far my novel was progressing.

5. Week two was a little harder than week one because I really had no idea as to what direction my story was headed.

6.  In the beginning, I was averaging 2300 words a day. This made me ahead of the game and I hit the 25,000 halfway mark before November 15.

7. If I missed some days, it wasn't the end of the world.

8. If I missed a day of writing, I still recorded at least 1700 words for that day. That meant that I had to bust my butt the next day (or whichever day I started writing again) and tackle the days that I lost before I could tackle that day's writing.

9. It does not count as cheating!  :)

10. I could still sleep, watch my TV shows and function without caffeine during the writing month. Sadly, I could not read any other novels because I was afraid that I would be distracted from my own novel.

11. It really helps if you have no children and outside activities to distract you from writing.

12. It is very easy to get drowsy and pass out on or right next to your computer while typing.

13. It is difficult to shut off my inner editor while writing. I would correct any red, underlined words that would pop up and I would occasionally rewrite sentences or paragraphs. I would not, however, take out full paragraphs or scenes.

14. Having my novel filled with grammatical errors, punctuation errors and sentences with wrong words or missing words is OK! I'm not here to revise; I'm here to write as much as I can in 30 days.

15. Having other people reading my novel as I am writing it provides great feedback!

16. I really wanted to attend the write-ins but I couldn't, for three reasons: my laptop can only survive for an 90-120 minutes on a fully charged battery, I need constant internet access, along with my dictionary and thesaurus, I cannot write with a lot of distractions.

17. I do all my best writing in the late afternoon and in the evening.

18. It is possible to write over 8,000 words in one day.

19. I tried really hard no to get too distracted. I never visited the NaNo forums until I was almost done with 50K, I didn't delve too much into the NaNo website during the month (except to check out the important headlines), I didn't fool around with Facebook, Twitter and other known time killers and I didn't play around on the internet unless it was to look up stuff for my novel.

20. If I don't reread what I have frantically written during the past days and weeks, I will forget many things, which will lead to plot holes, a change in characters or impossible scenarios. ALWAYS REREAD YOUR WORDS BEFORE WRITING!!!

21. Fifty thousand words is not a full-length novel. It's barely even half a novel! When I thought that I would be done with this book by the first week of December, I was so wrong.

I have close to 60,000 words written so far and I am still nowhere near being finished with this thing. I thought I was going to write a simple little standalone novel but now, it has turned into a something completely different; it has a mind of its own and it keeps telling my fingers to add more, more, more with no end in sight.

22. I never knew that the NaNoWriMo challenge (for me) would not actually end on November 30. I feel like the Energizer Bunny!

I keep writing and writing and writing...  :)

Until next time ~
 

The End of NaNoWriMo 2012

It is a brand new month today. December 1st means that NaNoWriMo for 2012 has officially ended. I have a strange, empty feeling inside knowing that I won't be able to gleefully enter my word counts and watch that long, red bar reach for my projected goal. My stats won't be updated on the fancy bar graph and I won't have the pleasure of downloading any more widgets that show me how many words I completed for the day.

But, I am so excited that I reached my NaNoWriMo goal. During the 30 days of the frantic will-I or won't-I write 50K words before the end of the month, I didn't know what to expect.

I am thrilled to announce that I ended NaNoWriMo 2012 on November 30 with... 55,171 words!! Yippee!!!

So, my plan is to keep writing. I have 180 pages of a novel so far and it needs to get finished. I know that some of you out there are begging me to read it and don't worry, you will!

Click here if you want to find me on the official NaNo website.

Thank you for all your support during my crazy writing month of November and thank you NaNoWriMo for challenging me to write 50K words in 30 days! Maybe I'll see you there in 2013... 

Until next time ~