NaNoWriMo Report

Today’s the last day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I specifically took it off to do a last blast on my novel.  But it’s also my 20th day of this headache.  So, I took it easy.  I have found that taking a Maxalt does wipe me out the day I take it but then the headache eases up for a few days, so I took a Maxalt.  I managed to get the grocery shopping done, which I had avoided on the weekend, and the laundry, which my son brought home from his weekend with his Dad.

I did finish writing up a scenario of the vision I have gained for the book.  I’ve definitely gotten less stuck than I was at the start of the month.  I think it could use another month (at least) of brainstorming.  But for December, I want to tackle The Mystical Mantle.  I think I will definitely have new energy for it.

I’m having fun with tracking my progress, though.  I always was a numbers person.  In the past, I never liked using word count.  So much of writing is revising, and you may need to take out more words than you write, so I like to go by time instead.  However, NaNoWriMo led me to see the value of using word count when you are doing a rough draft.  It helps you to keep your hand moving.

Since a lot of my revising of The Mystical Mantle is going to be inserting some new material, I may use some of that for writing the new material.  Anyway, I made myself a new spreadsheet like the one I was using for NaNoWriMo to track my progress, and I can use it for my blogs, too.  It’s rather fun.  I think I will also keep track of my time.  I had already decided to evaluate whether 30 minutes a day is a doable goal for 2010.  I enjoyed the goal of 15 minutes a day in 2009.  Maybe now that I’m in the swing of working full-time, I can do 30 minutes a day in 2010.

Anyway, I hope to still write a review or two tonight, but as far as novel writing goes, I am calling NaNoWriMo done for me for this year.  I did not meet the 50,000 word goal, but all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed participating, so for me it was a grand success. 

Here are my final statistics:

Words written on my novel:  17, 294

Blogging: 15,092 words

Total words, novel plus blogging: 32,386

Reviews written:  18

Other blog entries:  32

That counts Sonderquotes, which are other people’s words, and easy to write up.

All in all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this focus on writing, and it gave me new energy.  I also got all my pictures put up and the boxes in my room unpacked, so I also feel pretty much moved in to my new home — what’s left is basically putting away some last bits of clutter.

So now all I have to do is get rid of this headache.

Write on!

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