On Your Mark. Get Set. Go!

Yesterday, at 12:01 am, NaNoWriMo officially began. For those of you not in the know, that’s National Novel Writing Month. Registered writers have until midnight Nov. 30th to write a 175 page, 50,000 word novel. That’s technically more like a novella, but the folks at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ wanted to make it a doable goal for people. The majority of writers could never churn out a true 100,000 word novel in a month (Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and other author goddesses are the exception – they are paranormal creatures themselves, requiring little, if any, sleep to live).

This is my first ever attempt at this undertaking. Yes, I’m a NaNo virgin. Please be gentle with me. In order to meet the 50K goal in a month, authors need to average 1,667 words per day to stay on track. For me, I know my weekends are often iffy for writing productivity, so I have to try to get more like 2400 words a day, 5 days a week to keep up. I don’t think I’ve ever written that much on a daily basis in my life, but I’m gonna try. Afterall, the writing is not expected to be perfect. It's not called the shitty first draft for nothing.

So how did I do my first day? Not so well. I blame it on a rainy, miserable day with both my husband and two bored children trapped in the house with me. I only got 393 words done yesterday. But I just have to remember that I’m aiming to hit my writing goals during the weekdays while the kids are in school and anything done on the weekend is bonus material. Yesterday was Sunday, so technically NaNo in my household starts today and I’m already 393 words ahead. Yippee! Now let’s just see if I can do my 2400 words today and keep it up for the rest of the week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, have we got any other NaNos at the diner?