I was sitting in my car waiting for my daughter’s dance class to finish up, and I realized what day it was. Today we’re officially halfway through November, which means we’re halfway through NaNoWriMo, and THAT means a lot of folks participating in NaNoWriMo are halfway to their goals.
I wrote my second book (Lucky Day) during NaNoWriMo, and I remember how difficult it was to maintain that cadence of writing 1666 words per day.
I had to split it up, writing as much as I could for about an hour in the morning. I tried to hit 500, 600, 700 words because the more I could accomplish in the morning meant an easier time of reaching my daily goal in the evening. That would put me in good shape for writing later that afternoon or at night after putting my girls down to bed. I would go back to my laptop and keep writing and working and grinding away until I reached 1666 words.
So at this point in the month, if your writing goal is 50,000 words total, that means you’ve just crossed 25,000 words, which is amazing. Hitting those numbers consistently is truly challenging (I’ve been there).
My goal back then during NaNoWriMo was short of 50,000 words because I was working on a middle-grade novel. I ended up finishing the book by November 23 and had a week to go. I wanted to continue meeting the challenge of writing 1666 words per day, so I kept at it. I started another book, continued to hit the daily word count, and reached 50,000 words by the end of November.
Perhaps the hardest part of NaNoWriMo was that festive holiday that comes right at the end of November. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and it’s a long holiday weekend. Wednesday is usually festive as we get ready for Thanksgiving. And then Thursday, of course, is Turkey Day. And then there’s Black Friday, one of the laziest days in the calendar year, followed by the weekend that generally marks the beginning of the holiday season. It’s reasonably difficult to remain focused on the goal under those circumstances.
For anyone participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I’d love to hear from you! What’s your word count at? How’s it going? What are you doing to remain focused? And if you’re documenting your NaNoWriMo journey on social media, let me know so I can follow your progress!
Best of luck with it and keep writing!
