Nanowrimo 2021 - week 1

Well

hello there, and welcome to the second post 🥳

Nanowrimo, or the Nation Novel Writing Month, takes place each November. Where writers will come together and write 50.000 words in the month of November.

And this year, I had made the last-minute choice to participate in it too!

I really needed to kick myself into gear as the books weren’t writing themselves and I procrastinated a lot these last couple of months. On October 29, I had reached 100K inside the first book! I’ll reveal the title and some ‘’information‘’ about it, in one of the next few posts

And I thought why not start Nanowrimo and see it as a 0 count draft since it was sitting at a nice number either way…

I’m a Nano Rebel though, since I’m not taking those 50K really seriously, since am counting each word I have written inside any project inside this series. So that means I’m counting the words written in the first main project, but also the words I write inside the ’’outlines’’ of the next few books.

Day one

I was really excited to start this November with a huge head starts, since I know words are going to be hard when I start school Monday again. So I grabbed my tablet and started outlining the third book in the series.

In that book, I had one chapter I really was excited about, and from one thing came the other…

I wrote almost the whole chapter inside that book…

So because of that and some writing being done inside the main project I ended day one with a word count of…

You won’t even believe it

3105 WORDS

Yes, I couldn’t believe it myself…

But that chapter wrote it like itself, and when you are struggling inside your main project to find your voice. It’s a real nice feeling when a chapter almost writes itself. I think I’m in love with the characters of book 3…

And I can’t wait for you to all meet them!

Day two

As I got such a head start, by writing that one chapter in book 3, I thought I didn’t need to write much the second day. But I was feeling productive and motivated, as I still felt the rush I got from the first day and writing that one chapter.

The second day was spent working more on the outline of book 3 and getting to know those characters a bit more in-depth. And writing some words inside the main project. As I already have mentioned, I have trouble finding the voices of my characters in book 1. And because of that, I find it difficult to write them.

This is weird as I had already written 100K in their heads… But you know, writing is hard and sometimes as a writer, you feel like you’re writing shitty scenes and that’s probably isn’t true when you are first reading it…

Though, I had started Nanowrimo to get in the mindset of being a productive writer again. It was also a way to find the voices of my main characters again, and till this point in time, I hadn’t found it.

But I have ended the day with a word count of 2461 words. So not a bad day at all! The productive streak was still going strong! And it didn’t end there either!

Day three

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I work inside Google Docs for writing this series. Why you may ask? Well if it isn’t clear by now, English isn’t my native language, and grammar and spelling aren’t my forte. So Google Docs is the easiest way to get already some idea of my writing as it will underline things in blue when it isn’t grammatically correct! Easy right! And since I write mostly in the evening on my Ipad, and have written so many words already, it was getting irritating to scroll to the section I was working at. I wasn’t smart, since I didn’t work with paragraphs styles since the beginning so I did the tedious work and reformatted the whole thing so I could just click on the chapter header for the chapter I wanted to work on.

After doing that, I ended the rough outline for book 3. Rough as it was the shortest book yet, worth a chapter count of 41 chapters + 2 epilogues. *Spoiler* But things can always change when you write it, so I don’t worry about it for now! And it was always my intention anyway to keep these books shorter than Nath’s ones. It’s just a continuation of her books, to expand her world a bit more and to give the readers more content! So say thank you…

After that, I started again working on the main project. Words were hard and I wasn’t very happy with the chapter I was writing in the first place either. But I pushed through and ended the chapter with a reasonable count of 3707. There’s always the revision phase…

But exciting chapters were coming so I kept on writing, as I wanted to reach the 105K mark that day.

And guess what?!

I did it!!! I reached 105K that day, and ended the day with a word count of 3159. My best writing day till this point in time!

Day four

This day was just like the other days, most focussed on the main project. I started the interesting parts inside the story and I really was starting to get inside my character's head more!

As I had already mentioned, this month was to get myself back inside my characters' heads again. And on this day I really started to get into the zone again!

So for being on day four and starting to get me into the space again, was a nice surprise for me!

I locked this day on a word count of 2.411.

Day five

This day was rough, after having a great headstart with the project. I was not feeling it this day.

Words were hard and even if I was writing exciting scenes, I couldn't get inside the chapter.

So what is a girl going to do about that...

Starting brainstorming and outlining book 4 of course!

I didn't get far, but the first four chapters are "outlined" this day!

To get you more excited about this book, it's the special guest-starring of ... of Nath's books!

And no, I still won't spoil who it'll be!

I ended this day with a word count of 1.641 words

Day six

It was the weekend, so more writing time in general! The scenes that I needed to write were flowing quite good! And I was feeling my characters more and more again! I have to admit, writing words is still hard as fuck. But I made the connection with the characters again, and that was the goal for this month. So to achieve that in week one already is a milestone in it’s whole! and to speak about milestones….

I REACHED THE 110K! in that afternoon.

all in all was this a productive day with an end word count of 2832!

Day seven

The last day of the week, and the last day before school started again for me. So I wanted to take a last sprint before I probably would slack a bit again…

The words were going pretty well! I ended up writing the end of chapter 25. Still I was feeling motivated to write more, and wanted to reach the next milestone of 115K! And guess what…

We did it again…

I don’t know where the words were coming from… after months of procrastinating I write more than 15K in one month in this project alone. And I’m more than happy about that, since I was done being a lazy bitch and really wanted for things to get going. So all by all, the first week for me was a blast. I have outlined whole book 3 and written a whole chunk inside the main project!

This is the end of Week one of Nanowrimo! And I hope you‘ll be here for next week’s update! The end total of this week; 19348 words

Question time! Did you ever heard of Nanowrimo? And if so, have you ever (thought of) participated in it? Are you working on a project now? So yes, I would love to hear more about yours in the comments!

See you all next week for another Nano update, and maybe in the mean time I’ll write another post too!