Today I collected all my past NaNoWriMo word counts to figure out my 2011 NaNo goal with a theoretical job. It was an easier feat than expected thanks to the NaNo site archive, old blog posts, and my memory. In the end I needed to open only one document and run a word count; since I didn’t work on that novel (2008) at all after November, that word count was the November word count.
Here are all my past NaNoWriMo word counts.
2002: 50037
2003: 51992
2004: 52286
2005: 53726
2006: 50170
2007: 54823
2008: 61335
2009: 131014
2010: 300787
Guess what year I graduated. And no, that’s not a typo for 2006. I finished the story that year, and it’s one of my better ones. That doesn’t explain why it’s still unedited.
If you mentally added up those word counts like I did when I started thinking about it, you might notice that I’m near 800k cumulative words for the first nine NaNos. A million isn’t too far away now that I know how much I can really write in a month. In fact, it’s 193820 words away. That’s my goal for November 2011. Whether I have a job or not, I’m writing at least that many words and will likely aim for 200k. Weekends are for catching up, right? Of course, if I don’t have a job, I’m writing 500k. Next year will be my tenth NaNo, so it needs to be the best one yet. Hitting a million total November words is one way of making sure of that.
2 Responses.
Sushi must write, so indeed
She typed till her fingers would bleed
She now has a mess
Of words that I’d guess
Must be more fun to count than to read
November is all about quantity. But December is all about talking about quantity. In January, Sushi will add up all the words she wrote in December talking about her quantity.