I just came out of a 14,000 word day, mostly thanks to the #nanolanta chat room that helped me hit some of my best war times ever, including a particularly epic (for me) 3391 words in a 45-minute word war, which is better than my Write or Die rate.
This made me start thinking of what my new November goal is. I’ve already reached my original goal, but what now? I’m definitely aiming for 200,000 words, but according to the NaNolyser, I’m still on track for 225,000 words. In fact, I’m 10,000 words ahead as of this writing, which turns out to be a cushion of only a day.
So I looked ahead to 250,000. That’s more challenging. If I were aiming for that goal, I would have been behind for most of the month. There is significantly more red in this graph and a lot more red than I’m comfortable with. There are two kickers to this. I’m currently 7399 words behind and I would need to write over 9000 words per day to finish on time. I’ve had exactly four days of 10,000 or more words this month. Doing that almost every day for rest of the month would be very draining, both on my ideas and on my non-NaNo productivity. These jobs won’t apply to themselves, you know.
So for now I’ll aim for 225,000. If I really get on a roll over the next few days with a lot of 10k days, then maybe 250k will enter the picture. Maybe. Until then, I’m dodging that gauntlet.
4 Responses.
I wish I typed fast enough to crank out words the way you do. I know, for my part, that I can keep a steady ‘pantsing’ pace of about 40-45 wpm, but after that my form gets sloppy and I make egregious spelling mistakes. The kind that don’t justify not being able to correct them, because if I went back later I’d never be able to figure out what I was trying to say. Good luck with hitting 225k. This last week should be a blast!
@ForbiddenVoid I make a ton of spelling mistakes as well that I do go back to correct because otherwise I’d never know what they said. My writing isn’t the greatest at my speed, but it’s passable. And trust me, it took many years of NaNoing to write at this speed. I was much slower my first year.
How do you start writing a story? Do you just…start writing? Or do you outline it? Draw some sort of diagram?
@jmatthicks I just start writing. I go in with a vague concept and plan it as I go along. Most of the time I don’t even do that much planning, just go wherever my merry characters take me. This is much different than those who like to outline everything before getting started. I think it’s more fun my way.