Nanowrimo 2018

Nano-what-o? If you said “Nanowrimo” to me not so long ago, that would have been my response. I never heard of it, so of course I also did not know what it was all about. But lately I’ve been falling back in love with two passions of mine: reading and writing. Well, I’ve never really fell out of love with them, I just never had the time for the them. Or did not make the time. Either way, a couple months ago I finally got a new Kindle since my old barely functioned. With reading more has also inspired me to create again. I’ve been delving into the “booktube” and “writing-tube” (?) spaces on Youtube lately and heard some people mention doing “nano.”

I learned it’s an annual writing challenge/contest aimed to encourage people to write everyday. What’s the challenge? To write a 50,000 word manuscript during the month of November. Which averages to just over 1,600 words a day. Sounds pretty scary, right? But don’t worry about editing or it being your best work. Just write. I heard about it a few days before the end of October and after ending my Halloween night watching my favorite movies, I sat wondering whether to do it or not. So I signed up for it. And I decided to track my weekly progress here. Here’s how week one went…

As mentioned, I didn’t know much about Nanowrimo before signing up for it. And I didn’t bother to do much research, either. One reason was because I didn’t have much time as it had literally been two days between the day I heard of it and the day the challenge started. But perhaps jumping the gun was a good think because it didn’t allow me to needlessly overthink. I was thinking and planning a story, so this was the perfect time to discover Nanowrimo.

So, here is how week one went. For simplicity reasons, “week” one will only have 3 days since the month of November started on a Thursday.

Week One: November 1 to November 3

November 1st: So I’ll admit, I already kind of cheated. Let me explain. A day before hearing about Nanowrimo I felt really inspired to write the opening chapter of the story I was working on. I wrote it in just a couple hours and that was it. So, I am counting it as part of the 50,000 words. I mean, it was practically in November when I wrote it. Okay, I am trying to make excuses. But, anyways, I did, on November 1st, go back to it and add more to it, over two pages. So I still did add a good chunk of words to it. Total Word Count: 1,603

November 2nd: This was a little more intimidating. I had this idea for a story for a couple years and had immediately pictured the scene discussed from yesterday’s post. But the rest, I had no idea. I outlined (which I never used to do, I would wing it) so I knew what should come next. I worried about translating what was in my head onto the screen. However, I reminded myself that this challenge isn’t to write your best work in thirty days. It’s to just write. Even when I finish, there are likely going to be things that I will want to change. So I shouldn’t worry about that now. So I wrote. And wrote. The scene I ended up with made me really excited. It deviated a bit from what I planned, but I love it. Total Word Count: 3,431

November 3rd: This day was a little hard. I wrote, but I had trouble extending the chapter. I knew the chapter was too short once I felt what naturally flowed from my mind was onto the screen. But I didn’t know how to extend the chapter. I checked the word count and I was quite far from my targeted word goal. Upon further examination, there was one area I felt was undeverdevloped. So I racked my brain, playing the scene out in my head and trying to think of ways to add to it. It was tough and took a lot of writing, coming back to it, and repeat before finishing it. I may have to add to the chapter a litte more tomorrow, but I hit my goal. Total Word Count: 5,038.

So, there you have it. My first “week” doing Nanowrimo. I will have a final recap both on here and Youtube. Stay tuned! Let me know if you are participating in this year’s Nanowrimo challenge. But in the meantime, check out my video also discussing the first week of Nanowrimo: