NaNoWriMo Update

Hello everyone!

I’ve been on hiatus for the past month so I could focus on NaNoWriMo, but I’m back and ready to start blogging again!

Overall, NaNo went pretty well. For those of you who don’t know, “NaNo”, or “NaNoWriMo” stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November, writers try to write 50,000 words (the average length of a novel) in 30 days. This year was my first year doing it.

Week 1

Thanksgiving happens in November, so I wanted to be able to take Thanksgiving off. I also wanted to be able to take some other days off. Before NaNo started, I decided to write 2,000 words a day so I could take five days off in November.

The first two days went really well. I got a little bit ahead of 2,000 on both days. On the third day, however, I only caught up 300 words. I managed to catch myself up the next day. Each day became harder and harder to get to the 2,000 count. By the end of the week, I had gotten 4,000 words behind.

Week 2

On Monday of this week, I realized I was almost halfway through my story. I frantically posted sticky notes on a piece of cardboard and added in a few more events. I hoped that these events would make the story last to 50,000 words. When I was finished plotting, I realized I was still behind. On Wednesday, I did some math and found out I was only about 1,000 words behind if I stuck to writing 1,600 words every day. I decided to do that and skip taking days off.

A few days after catching up, I flat out wrote no words. No words! The next day, I caught up and kept getting to my daily word count for a few days.

Week 3

This was by far the hardest week. The first day, I stayed caught up. After that, I didn’t write at all for the next two days. It dawned on me that I was officially behind, so I wrote 2,000 words the next day to catch up a little. The next few days were a series of trying not to get too far behind.

On Friday of this week, my brother had a play. We also had some family staying over. I was very worried I would get behind, but I actually caught up. All of us had to go to the play two hours early. I brought my laptop with me so I could do some writing. I managed to write 4,000 words that day. I was officially caught up.

Week 4

This week went pretty well. The hardest part of this week was being able to pull myself away from family activities to write. I stayed caught up through most of the week. On Thursday of that week, the little thought of my story not lasting through the 50,000 words had come true. I finished my story with 4,000 words to go.

I decided to add a very long epilogue to my story. I now had 3,000 words left. Then I wrote a short story. I finished the short story with 500 words left, so I decided to write a poem about NaNoWriMo. I finally finished with 50,031 words.

To celebrate, my brother and I bundled up in snowpants, coats, hats, and gloves. A few days earlier, we had gotten a huge snowstorm that had dumped three feet of snow. The wind had blown too. Our yard was drifted with tall drifts. My brother and I played in the snow until our fingers and toes were numb. Then we went inside and ate leftover Thanksgiving pie.

If I could give anyone one piece of advice for NaNoWriMo, it would be to not get behind. When I got behind, my word count to catch up on kept growing and growing. It was extremely hard to catch up. Everything would have been much less stressful if I hadn’t let myself get behind.

How did your NaNo go? I’ll see you again soon! Bye for now!

-Hannah