I decided a few months away from November 2019 that I wanted to try the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. This is an online-based creative writing project where writers are encouraged to produce at least 50,000 words of a novel. The work does not have to be completed for the challenge to be won, just as long as 50,000 words have been written during November 1 to 30. There are no prizes for completing the challenge. It’s more the satisfaction of either completing a novel or writing a substantial chunk of one.
My Challenge
I did not officially sign up for NaNoWriMo. Instead, I set my own personal 50,000-word goal for November. To be honest, I didn’t think I could do it. I had never written that much in a single month. Nevertheless, I had a go, and the results surprised me.
My Approach
I decided I wanted to write the first 50,000 words of the second book of my Hardy Series. I should note that I was still in the editing stage of the first book of that series, Act of Grace. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a head start on the second book.
I knew the general story I wanted to tell, so the first thing I had to do was outline it. To outline my story, I used the Binder feature in Scrivener, my writing software. It allowed me to set out my chapters and scenes, and shift them around if necessary until I had the storyline following a logical path. In years past, I used Excel for this, but now Scrivener makes the job so much easier. I didn’t outline the whole story, though, because I wanted a bit of flexibility to suit my style of story development, but the nuts and bolts of the story were all noted. This outlining process is what I do for all my stories short and long.
To help me stay on track and visualise my month of writing, I made an Excel spreadsheet (see below). If I wrote 1,667 words a day, I’d reach 50,010 words by November 30. Somehow, seeing it written in the table made the task look so much more achievable. Using simple SUM formulas, I calculated the ongoing word counts so I could see what I should be at on any given day.
Writing
From day to day, I tried to stick to my 1,667-word goal. As you can see from the table below, some days I missed that, whereas on other days I definitely surpassed it. Having it all laid out and updated daily in a tracking spreadsheet helped me to plan alongside my other commitments and gave me an incentive to work harder when I was lagging behind.
Throughout the writing process, I would think of other chapters and scenes to add, as well as various other little details. These were easily slotted in thanks to Scrivener’s functionality. What tripped me up a few times was ensuring consistency across the series. I had to open up my Act of Grace file to check names of characters and other smaller details because many of them appear again in the second book. When I wrote my first manuscript, Red Dagger, I concurrently wrote a series bible so I could keep track of details in that universe. I don’t know why I didn’t start doing this for the Hardy Series, but rest assured I have one in the works now!
Results
On November 26, I reached my 50,000-word goal! I decided I would stop once I reached that goal. NaNoWriMo 2019 showed me that I can have a good output if I am organised, prepared, and disciplined. These are good lessons learned, and ones that will surely influence my writing from now on.
Where To From Here?
Taking what I learnt from NaNoWriMo 2019, I’ve decided to implement a monthly word count tracking system to ensure I maintain a solid month-to-month output, beginning in January 2020. Utilising Excel again, I used the above table for a twelve month period, but set the daily target to 1,500 words. To succeed with this planned output, I know I will need strong preparation and disciplined task management. I have a fair amount of editing to do, which might reduce my daily word counts, but we’ll see what happens.
Projects for December 2019 and into 2020 will keep me busy. The goal for December is to finish editing Space Trip and to write two to three short stories for specific anthologies. Come January 2020, I will go full steam ahead with edits for Act of Grace and finishing its as-yet untitled sequel, as well as writing more short stories.
It’s a busy road on the writing and editing front, but also for my reading. As the TBR pile continues to grow, I keep chipping away at it. Novels, anthologies, and short story magazines keep getting added to the list and I slowly get through them one or two at a time. For the foreseeable future, I am still able to continue as a slush reader for Andromeda Spaceways Magazine and Aurealis, two great Australian speculative fiction magazines. Both publications are doing a stellar job (no pun intended) in representing Australia on the speculative fiction stage, and I am proud to be a part of them.
Final Words
If anyone would like a copy of my 2020 Word Count Tracker, just let me know through the Contact form and I’ll send it to you in my reply. You can change the daily targets to suit your own goals. Happy reading and/or writing!