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Friday, November 07, 2008

5,931 words: Time to start catching up

After several days of not working on my novel, tonight I finally added another 1,281 words, for a grand total of 5,931. That still puts me significantly behind, since I should have over 10,000 words by now!

Of course, the calendar widget seems to be having some problems right now, so please go by my reported word count and NOT what the calendar says — at least not until it starts working again!

I am anticipating having some extra time to work on my novel tomorrow evening, and on Saturday I'm attending a NaNoWriMo write-in for my area, so hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have gotten caught up. Wish me luck!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best way I've found to keep up is to do my daily quota before I get started on the rest of my writing day and business writing. The business writing head is quite different, for me, than the fiction head.

My daily goal is 2500 words/day, because I need to hit 50K before I leave for Maine for Thanksgiving. The first few days were tough, but I'm not allowed to start my day until I meet my quota. Period. A day or two of wiggling in the chair wasting a few hours, and you learn to cough it up. I'd say it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to hit 2500 words on most days. And, while it will definitely need revision, I'm sticking to things like spelling grammar, structure, and etc., so I'm not just spilling out nonsense.

It gets it done. And there's plenty of time to get the business writing done. Because there's nothing like knowing I have to get something out to a client to motivate me to sit down and get it all done.

Katharine Swan said...

Devon,

Thanks for visiting and sharing your suggestions!

When I did NaNoWriMo two years ago, I did my business writing in the afternoon and worked on my novel every night, usually from about midnight or 1 until 3 or 4 in the morning. That seemed to work exceptionally well: My motivation was the opposite of yours, and knowing that I had to get my "real" work done first so that I could work on my novel helped me stay on top of it.

Of course, the exact same schedule won't work for me this year -- I go to bed and get up earlier than I did back then.

Honestly, I think I've just had too much going on the past few days, what with fixing my car and trying to spend time with Panama. Late at night is when I'm most productive and feel like I do the best writing, so I think if I can get a handle on my daytime work, achieving my word count quota in the evenings should be a piece of cake.

Katharine Swan said...

P.S. You are faster than I am, by the way. I can do two thousand words in an hour when I am really in the zone, but normally it's somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 words an hour.

Anonymous said...

I tried joining NaNo again this year, but I knew from the outset it was impossible. I was just too swamped with work. My only goal this year is to think up a plot and create an outline; I'm not sure I'll be able to do even that!

But anyways, I'm so happy for you Katharine! This one is turning out much better than the last, isn't it?

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