NaNoWriMo Kicks Off! (Without me. Sort of)

And off they go! I'm imagining a scene kind of like the Comrades Marathon, but with laptops and thousands of fingers typing...


I'm not participating - not properly anyway. Too many school things happen in November. The school year finishes in early December so there's lots to get done this month (including marking of exams, collecting of textbooks, tidying of classrooms, end-of-year meetings, planning for next year...).
BUT I have decided to participate in my own small made-up way so that I have a daily goal just like the rest of you (and I can hopefully get far more words on a page than I otherwise would have!)

500 words a day!

I know, I know. It seems kind of piddly compared to the 1667 all the real NaNoWriMo-ers will be aiming for every day. But it's better than zero :-)

Setting Yourself a Daily Writing Goal

So it's clear I wasn't going to reach 16000 words in five days, but that kinda doesn't matter since my actual goal this week was to finish a certain writing project, and since I did that on Wednesday, all writing I did/do yesterday and today I view as a bonus :-)

Anyhoo... I've been pondering the idea of setting yourself a specific number of words to be written each day...

Cons

• I started caring less about the story I was writing and more about the word count in the bottom left corner of my screen.
• I felt bummed about not reaching my desired word count, even if the number of words I managed to write was still pretty impressive for me.

Pros

• Knowing I was aiming for a certain number kept me more focused and disciplined than I would have been otherwise.
• Keeping track of the numbers means I can look back on the past few days and see exactly how much I've achieved.

Things I've Discovered

• Writing that much in a condensed period of time (which I haven't done before) is more mentally tiring than I expected.
• If I were to do this full time, every day, with no other work to distract me (something I've wished for for a while) I think I might go insane! A long gym break in the middle of the day would definitely be required!
• I would also have far more frequent back ache - I'm just not used to sitting for so many hours a day!
• And I'm kind of grateful that I'm a teacher (though I still wish it took less time!) - a job that gets me out of the house, interacting with young people and on my feet for several hours a day.
  

Have you discovered anything recently about your writing process?

Holiday Goals: Day Three

Goal word count: 3200 (I gave up on the idea of adding the previous day's missed words. That was never gonna happen!)

Actual word count: 2700

Comments: So. Once again I've missed my daily quota. BUT the awesome news is that I miscalculated how many words I'd need to get to the end of my current project and so... I'm finished already! And I did several hundred words of a new project! And I had a wonderful dinner out to celebrate my four year dating-anniversary! (Okay, the exclamation marks shall stop now...)

Holiday Goals: Day Two

Goal word count: 3400

Actual word count: 2600

Comments: Oops... So, um, there's this book called LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR that I kind of read about HALF of while I was meant to be writing today. BAD ME! But the 2600 words were fun... and LOLA is awesome. So the day was great :-)

Holiday Goals: Day One

Goal word count: 3200

Actual word count: 3000

Comments: Not bad considering boyfriend decided we needed to spend some together (quite right) and so part of the day went to movies and the mall. So I should totally reach tomorrow's quota :-)

Holiday Goals

It's the end of term 3 and we have a week off before the final school term of the year begins. I have big plans for this week, plans that begin (and end) with writing 16000 words in 5 days. This works out to 3200 words a day. Now you may be thinking, that's easy, you'll totally manage that, but I am unfortunately one of those writers who mulls things over in my head far too much before putting them down onto a page/screen. Thus, the most I've written in a day is just over 2000 words.
*Sigh*
Setting myself an unrealistic goal here? Probably!




PS. Sorry, second campaigner challenge, it's just not gonna happen!