So this time last year was an unmitigated disaster, and it’s telling there weren’t any more weekly posts after week one last year. This year I’m singing a different tune.
I’ll go into stats and numbers later on in this posts, however right now day six has just finished, and I finished it at 22,056. I’m not starting with any other number than that purely because I just want to take a moment to enjoy it. To bask in it.
Why because by Thursday, though I was over performing the 1,667 daily weird count by a few hundred our so each day I didn’t think I’d do it. I was behind on my pre-NaNoWriMo schedule that I’d set. Now I’m a tough scheduler, when setting them, but I do my best to make them easy to adjust when inevitably underachieve, which I was doing.
So what changed? Friday I went into the #NaNoYorks chatroom and met some lovely fellow participants, and we challenged and encouraged each other. As a result Friday I hit the 10k mark, and that felt great, I was start to build some steam, and have a buffer against a bad day.
Saturday was even better, had a great write-in in Leeds city centre, meeting many of the people I’d been in chat with the night before, and some familiar faces from previous years. Drank lots of tea, and wore a lot of words. That wasn’t enough though, so I was back in chat Saturday night, and when I was struggling to motivate myself and get started again I was given a prod or two and made it to 16k, and that felt great too.
Carried on after midnight too with some hardcore NaNoWriMo’ers still doing word wars until 3am. Wasn’t quite as much written in those hours, but it did nicely.
Sunday evening it was a similar tale until midnight, it’s with their help that achieved my 22k.
It’s a genuine pleasure to be part of a community of writers all working towards the same goals, even if we all do so at faster and/or slower paces than myself. We all enjoy writing, talking about our writing, and other topics when we need a break.
I’ll be spending a lot more time in chat and won’t be skimping in write-ins, after payday will be going to more than just Leeds ones, I’d like to goto a Huddersfield one, and one in Scarborough (as post of a weekend writing by the sea).
So anyway, I’m feeling positive, and am hoping to get to 50k by mid-month so I can enjoy the pleasure of writing with less pressure for the rest of the month. The more I write the more options i’ll have in editing in January, and hopefully I can carry the form in December and redo the works in progress I mentioned in previous posts.
Anyway, six days in I’m getting good stats now from my tracking spreadsheet:
Words so far: 22,056
Total hours writing: 26
Avg Words Per Day: 3676
Avg Hours Per Day: 3.12
Avg Words Writing Per Minute: 15.25
Avg Words Per Hour: 915
Max Words Per Minute in a Single Session: 49.3
Avg Morale Per Day: 7 (a qualifiable number based on how I feel each writing period, or out of 10)
Number of Words Remaining: 27,944
Number of Days Remaining: 23
Number of Hours Remaining: 28.00
Those stats may not mean much to most people, but to me they’re a story that is unfolding as I do this project. For instance the average words per minute has risen by five since Friday which tells me that when I suit down and write I’ve been more focused and am starting to spend less time looking at a blinking cursor. Which is a very good story if you’re me.
I’ll stop feeling now and get on with writing. Here’s hoping for continued successes.
Aspiring 