Tuesday, November 02, 2004
NaNoWriMo Day 1 Recap
If you write every day in November it works out that you need to average 1,667 words a day to hit the target 50,000. Yesterday I wrote 2,234 - a surplus of 567 words. Since I plan on missing a few days here and there, that padding will come in handy later.
Here's how it went:
- As I mentioned in my early-morning post yesterday, I started writing at 12:00:01 and got 50 words in. I added "The End" to bump it up from 48. I don't know if I'll include "The End" in a final draft; I think people will figure out when the words stop coming that it's time to stop reading. Maybe I give people too much credit.
- During the afternoon I wrote for 30-40 minutes camped out in the cafe section of Fred Meyer while Phil hung out in PlayLand. I was eating a sandwich at the time, so I had to keep taking my hands off the keyboard. I only managed about 360 words. I need to invent a sandwich feeding contraption that's like a feedbag, but won't block my view of the laptop.
- On the way home from Freddy's I had a brainstorm about one of my characters, Sheriff Brandon Woo. I wrote down as much of it as I could in my notebook when I got home. I think I remembered everything I had thought of while I was driving. I put fresh batteries in my microcassette recorder when I got home (I could have used it in the shower this morning, too). Those words didn't count toward my daily total.
- At a little after 9pm I got down to writing in earnest. It took about 90 minutes to get the first 600 words into the computer (for a 1,000 word daily total). Then I had a Diet Pepsi and a mini-bag of Bugles as a reward. In the next hour I cranked out another 1,200 words. I may start with a soda at 9 tonight and see if that help the first half go faster. My waistband can't take too many extra servings of snackfood.
Mikesell
