So, before we get into my NaNoWriMo updates, I want to make a correction. In my last blog post, I mentioned that this was the first time since 2019 that I was participating in NaNo. That wasn’t true. I did, in fact, participate in NaNo in 2020. I wrote over 73 thousand words in November 2020, and yet, 2020 being the weird-ass time that it was, I completely blanked that out. Does anyone else have difficulty remembering things from that year? This is not the first instance of my having completely and utterly forgotten something that happened during plague year 1.
And now, the Update
During the second week of NaNo, I pushed my average daily word count up from 3,051 words a day to 3,694 words a day. By November 14th, I had written 47,221 words for the month.
My highest word count for NaNo week two was 6,339 words on November 12th, and my lowest was 1920 on November 14th (which was a pretty shit day, overall, so I was happy with that word count).
I’d been hoping to hit 50 thousand words by November 15th, but I could only get 1070 words written that day for reasons I’ll get into in a later blog post. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be able to write on the 15th, so I was happy with that word count.
On November 16th, I wrote 3,595 words, which put me over the finish line at 51,886 words for the month.
So, I’ve technically won NaNoWriMo for 2023. I don’t need to write any more if I don’t want to. But I really want to.
So, Now What?
There’s a crazy voice in the back of my head that is egging me on to try for 100 thousand words by November 30th.
As of November 17th, I’ve written 55,152 words for the month, meaning I will need to write 44,848 words in the next 13 days. To achieve that, I’ll need to write 3,450 words each day, which is doable if I don’t have any more days where I’m super busy or feel like absolute crap. And there’s no guarantee of that, is there?
I’ll still try to push for 3,450 words daily, but one of my other goals this month is not to burn myself out doing NaNo. So, if the words aren’t flowing or I need to prioritize my health over my words, I won’t push myself to hit that word count. I’ll be happy to get as much of this novel done this month as possible and not need to spend the entirety of December sleeping.
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