NaNo NaNoWriMo - End of Week One

Posted by brilokuloj on Dec 7, 2017

We’re one week into Nano NaNoWriMo, so I figured I’d take you all aside to see how you’re doing.

I’m doing well personally. I was surprised to find that my comfortable daily output is 500 words a day, and I went ahead and bumped my wordcount because 333 was actually starting to bore me.

But I normally write professionally and this is a writing jam for fun, so you really shouldn’t be basing your output on mine. I’ll go ahead and talk about it a little.

Wordcount

What’s your wordcount so far? This is a good opportunity to dial it back if you’re feeling like you can’t meet the day-to-day grind, or even stop entirely if you’ve realized that this just isn’t for you.

I realize that a lot of you even have holiday preparations to worry about. This is meant to be a non-stressful event, something that you can work on during your coffee breaks.

Remember - there’s no shame in it. You can still participate in the community, even if you quit. We’re just here to provide resources for beginning writers.

Filler

A good way to see if you’re pushing yourself too hard is to see if you’ve started worrying about putting in filler.

Padding is something that even NaNoWriMo participants will encourage you to do. Dropping hyphens from words, writing out numbers, and even removing contractions are common practice. I don’t really think this is a good idea personally, as it just means you’re spending a lot of your time doing nothing, and it has the potential to distract the reader.

Winning

I feel the need to emphasize, if you haven’t noticed by now, that there’s not going to be a “winner” or a verification that you met your goal. I admire NaNoWriMo’s goal to get more people to publish their writing in a visible space, but I don’t think the idea of winning is particularly helpful, especially when it draws attention away from people who might have lowered their goals or not finished.

So, really, if you joined, you won. Maybe I’ll give out little participation trophies or something.

Tagged: ihateart nano nanowrimo writing

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