Happy first day of NahNoWriMo, everyone.
This morning I took advantage of the extra hour on the clocks to get started on my word count early in the day, but I can see already the disadvantage that certain nonfiction writing has with this kind of writing marathon: the burden of research. Even those details of events that have already been uncovered and organized need to be reread and reconsidered, which adds a chunk of time to the daily word generating. Part of me wants to just spew from memory and worry about accuracy and details later—and for nonessential details, I’m doing just that—but the smarter, more practical, lazier part of me refuses to waste a month doing work that will need to be repeated later simply because I was too careless or rushed or cocky to look up the facts or think things through.
Practicality FTW.
We have a guest coming to visit in a few weeks (plus the Thanksgiving holidays), so I’m aiming for a minimum of 2000 words per day in order to stay on track for the month. I’ve got my work cut out for me (plus a heap of other things to take care of), but I’m determined not to stress too hard about it: my primary goals for participating in NahNoWriMo are to make progress on this draft and to get back into a consistent writing schedule. As long as I stick to those two goals, I don’t care whether or not I “win” or adhere to the rules.
(If you knew how much headache rules had created on that exact project that I’m currently writing about, you’d have a really good laugh right now.)
Fellow NahNoWriMoer (NahNoWriMoid?) Kelpie has been so kind as to create the original NahNoWriMo art that you see above (please don’t smite us, NaNoWriMo), and, of course, no writing marathon would be complete without a handy dandy word count meter:
I promise not to regale you all with daily word crunch reports: I don’t want to write them any more than you want to read them. But I’ll be sure to check in now and then to let you know how it’s going.
I hear that NahNo rebels JHammons kicked ass for 2100 words of her work-in-progress novel and SpitBall Army organized the hell out of 30 years’ worth of letters to be transcribed. How’d everyone else do today?
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Heh. I’m gonna post my end of the night tally later. Despite morning distractions I’ve managed about 1200 words of pure sappy rubbish. But I suppose that’s to be expected after mainlining on youtube clips of my old teenage guilty pleasure (Santa Barbara) between sports games on the TV today…
If tweets count, I’ll be done in a week.
Count me in! Kellie, thanks for this kick in the rear to get me writing again. The new school year overwhelmed me for a couple of months. But now I’m joining you all in NahNoWriMo. However, instead of non-fiction, I’m working on some much neglected poetry. On my first day, I retrieved some poems written in notebooks, polished them up and stuck them all pretty like on to my hard drive. Since I got a career and a family to tend to, my word count goals are pretty modest. Besides, it’s flippin’ poetry. I’m very pleased with today’s effort of four poems clocking in at just over 300 words in total.
How fun! Glad to have you aboard, llady. If you care to join Twitter (yes, I realize how unlikely that is), there are a couple of folks NahNoWriMoing there (hashtag: #NahNoWriMo).
Obviously 50k is an unlikely goal for you (unless you want to write an epic (is there a French-Canadian Iliad of any kind?)), but it might help you stick to it, llady, if you keep a specific goal in mind (1 poem per day, x number of poems per week or by the end of the month, etc). Even if you don’t hit the target, you might make better progress if you have something to aim at.
Kathy, if you want to commit to one perfect tweet per day or something, that sounds like an attempt to me!
Sockii, nice job. I’m especially impressed that you blasted through words while also managing various televised extracurriculars.
Go, team, go!