For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in one month, specifically, November. 50,000 words in 30 days works out to be 1667 words per day. Theoretically those words should go together to tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end within those 50,000 words.
Last year I did it for the first time. I thought, "Hey, I'm a professional writer. I've been published. I've been produced. Things have been made with my writing in them. I can do this standing on my head. I will finally write my Great American Novel."
My problem was, I wasn't sure how much story would fit into 50,000 words. It turns out that 50,000 is a short novel, like The Great Gatsby, or Old Man and the Sea. You know, the ones you read off the required reading list in high school based on their page count. It's a little over 100 paperback pages. I outlined my story and I still didn't know if I would have too much or two little. I decided to divide it into two acts, and if I got through my first act with only 20k words, I'd write my second act. If, on the other hand, I got to 50,000 words and was at the end of my first act, then I'd end the story there.
So I gave myself a daily goal of 2000 words per day. That way if I missed a day or so, I would have a nice buffer zone of words banked, and I'd still get my 50,000 words. I only missed one day; when we woke up at 5am and flew back from Florida and I got home and was totally exhausted. So in one month last year I wrote a little over 58,000 words.
But something happened in the writing. I was setting up all this stuff that had to pay off in Act II. I got to the end of Act I somewhere in the low 60's, but the story wasn't done. I kept writing.
In the 11 months since NaNoWriMo ended last year, I have written another 30,000 words, and I was still nowhere near the end of the story.
Here we are, halfway through this year's NaNoWriMo, I've got another 33,000 words and I can just see the end in sight. Technically that makes me a "rebel" this year, since the rules state you have to start the novel on November 1, and I continued a piece of writing I had previously started. It doesn't much matter. The point of NaNoWriMo is that when you win, you've the prize is that you've written a novel. So if it took me two consecutive years to win, then so be it. My novel is longer than a standard NaNo novel.
So here's my status tracking widget:
