NaNo Update

I should be up to almost 17k words, but I’m behind. Took a couple sick days last week, and had a surprise mid-day date with my husband yesterday. My current count is 10,645. I am my own worst enemy. Too easy to get distracted and let a valuable hour disappear. I haven’t been writing on weekends. If I get near the end of the month too far behind, that may change.

My goal for this week is to get to 25,000 by the end of Friday. My half way point.

One tool that has helped me get this far is Write or Die. I set a word count and/or time goal, and go for it. With the screen going red, and warning sounds when I don’t write, I’m encouraged to write without over thinking. I can’t stop and spend ten minutes coming up with a name, or looking up a fact that is overall unimportant. I have to go with my gut, let the story take me. My monitor is big enough that I can have a word document open on the left with my outline, and Firefox open on the right with the Write or Die box. That way I don’t even have the excuse of stopping to look up what comes next. I have my one paragraph description per chapter, and go from there.

Without Write or Die: average 1000 words/hour.

With Write or Die: average 1600 words/hour.

Best uses: to start of the day. Great encouragement starting off with a big chunk in half an hour. Also to make most use of short period of time.

 

Here’s the banner for my NaNoWriMo Novel:

Make your own banner at MyBannerMaker.com!

 

Death count: 1.

99 + to go.

 

Other interesting tidbit: Race to 100 Deaths has now matched Trinity Coven in word count. In a matter of ten days! I need to be this disciplined all year round. :-)