NaNoWriMo Week #1

Well for some reason (maybe the bad weather) I have chosen to compete in a competition of friendly writing sport called National Novel Writing Month. It was started by a guy in america a few years ago with some friends and has now grown into a world wide event with 150,000 odd participants. Through their website, and following peoples twittering about their progress the whole way through, it feels like a close worldwide community of writers all churning out words albeit just for 1 month of the year.

The aim is to write like a mad man with frenzied fingers and get 50, 000 words of fiction down before the month end. It is meant to be a novel but some entrants are non fiction works or documentarys etc.

It has been a great first week so far. The first 10,000 words have been the easiest... then when I got to 12-20k the going was slightly more involved but still manageable. As everyone has been saying it gets harder when you've got to actually make your characters do something in the land called 'plot'. And reading everyones posts on the competition website everyone is slowing down at about the same point.

Day one i sat bum on couch from 12-12 and got 8700 words down. By Monday evening, day 3, I had 11,something k. Tuesday night got up to 14 and a half k. Weds night got to 15, k. Note sleep cut back by 2-3hours each night so I can fit this typing in. Starting to feel the drag of a half awake person and a heavy head. But must. keep. typing. By Friday night im at 15,700K. Sat I spent another 8 hours writing and half of sunday, total 6000 something words. So now at the end of week one I have got to 22,750 words. I was aiming for 25K... but ohwell I'm really pleased with what writing I have done so I'm giving myself sunday evening off (to write more and update my blog of course).

To write this many words in 30 days, you need to do a mininum/average of 1700 words a day. So I need to retain my word count lead and carry on the word count one upmanship because I will need some time in week 4 to relax and edit my unmasterpiece.

So here's to week 2. Cheers to all my fellow NanoWrimo participants :D