Hello all!
So, you might have noticed, this is a New Thing. This year for NaNoWriMo, I decided to keep a daily record of my NaNoWriMo for 2021. Why? Partly because I keep seeing other bloggers doing it and always have so much fun reading theirs, so I wanted to give it a try; partly because I feel it could be really helpful to have a nice record of how it goes to look back on; and partly because Accountability. I...really need accountability, my good lads. That's just how it be. Yes, I am aware that absolutely no one follows or cares about this blog and yes, I am aware no one will read this. I'm just doing it for the vibes.
A quick reminder, for NaNoWriMo this year, I am tackling the ginormous task of wrapping up Project Wales, my NaNo project from last year, ideally within 50-60k words. Hopefully. It's getting to be a bit of a monster so...we'll see.
With all that explanation out of the way, let's go!
Beginning Novel Word Count: 82 364 words
Monday, November 1st
This day, my friends, was top-notch. As far as writing went, I for the most part just. Sat down and wrote. It was great! I made the decision ahead of time to stop pre-NaNo at the end of a chapter so I could start NaNo with a fresh(ish) slate. And I spent a bit of time brainstorming what would happen in this next chapter so once NaNo came, I could just sit down and write it without having to stop and think.
Because I have the sleep schedule of Dracula, I'm pretty much always awake until like two or three...or four in the morning, so this year, I opted to start writing at midnight. I didn't want to write for too long, I still had my nighttime Bible reading and prayer to do, but I ended up writing until about quarter to one and got 1241 words before wrapping up for the night, having completed the first scene of Chapter Sixteen!
This scene was entirely in my boy Jules' POV and it was...depressing, to say the least. Jules is...not having a fun time right now. It's not fun for him.
Once I got up in the morning, I did a bit of writing once I was dressed, writing about 700 or so words before I made lunch.
This year, I decided to join the King's Daughters Writing Camp - which was, to be honest, an extra anxiety in the lead-up to NaNo, but I think I'm...starting to ease into it now? Kind of?
Anyway, today I got into the writing sprints channel and just sprinted with a few other campers for a few hours, which brought my word count up massively. All in all, by the time I stopped at like five in the afternoon, I had a word count I was super happy with!
My goal for this first day was to write 5k, thus getting me solidly ahead. My tactic when it comes to NaNoWriMo is typically to try and stay well ahead of my daily word count, so if I do have a bad day where I can't write, it doesn't completely set me back. So, I aim at 5k the first day, and at 3-5k for the days after, more if I can get it, but if I don't, then I'm ahead enough that it doesn't matter, you know?
And it worked out! I wanted to try and finish Chapter Sixteen the first day (my chapters for Project Wales are all like 5k words long, mega boys), which didn't work out, but I still got a solid amount of words done! Could I have carried writing past the time I stopped and thus maybe finished off the chapter? Yes, probably, but I didn't want to push myself too much and I wanted to watch something with my sister, so I decided to stop there for the day.
I will say there are already issues I can see with what I've written. That first scene I wrote in the morning - as opposed to the first scene of the chapter, which I wrote the night before - I think came out sounding quite awkward and it didn't quite come across the way I wanted, but I really like the idea of that scene and I think there's something there for me to try and perfect at a later date, and that's really all you can ask for in a first draft.
However, I did finally get to take my characters to a setting that I created so long ago and that I've been desperate to actually use, and it came out so well! I'm so happy with it! It's this eerie magical library that's made from curving silver trees and carved purple wood, that goes on forever and bends back on itself, like a magical library labyrinth. It's so beautiful yet eerie and slightly creepy and I love it! Yes, the descriptions could maybe use work - especially surrounding my attempts to describe how the labyrinth element works, but for the most part, this setting actually came out better in my draft than it was in my head and that's always a pleasant surprise.
All in all, I had a really good writing day this day, I really felt like it went well. I prayed before writing for God's help and guidance and I really felt like the words came easier afterward, so I give Him the glory for that. I definitely had moments where I was struggling, yes, especially when I first started writing in the morning, but I prayed for help with writing and it truly felt like I could write better afterwards. Definitely planning on integrating prayer more into my writing routine. I think it's the right thing to do, so I'm going to try and pray and ask for guidance and help before any major writing sessions.
Words Written: 5412 words
Tuesday, November 2nd
This day wasn't as easy. As opposed to Monday, where I pretty much had the whole day to write without anything to interrupt, on Tuesday, I had a Bible study in the morning until lunchtime. Which, for me, means hours of recovery time and trying to force my gremlin brain into stopping whatever I'm doing and just writing. I do best when I can just wake up and write without interruption, because that way I can keep myself from starting on The Spiral of doing other stuff to avoid writing haha.
I still got a few words in though, once I managed to kick myself into gear and wrote for about an hour or so in the late afternoon. I ended up writing just over a thousand words and finally finishing off the chapter I started on Monday. And! I wrote one of my favourite scenes thus far in my entire novel! Featuring Haneul, Jules, bags of frozen food on bruises, and a very precious cautiously blossoming friendship.
Words Written: 1231 words
Wednesday, November 3rd
WE HIT 10K TODAY BOYSSS
Today, I didn't have anything to do but write... which of course meant I put off writing until like three in the afternoon but it's fine, it's chill, everything's fine. Once I did get down to it, however, as you can see up there, I hit 10 000 words!!!
It was pretty slow-going and agonising at first. I had a whole week of time in-story to skip over and because my characters were going to the real world setting of Llandudno in this chapter, I had to use Google Earth to describe it in lieu of not currently being able to go physically to Llandudno to remind myself what it looked like, which slowed my writing down considerably at first. It's way harder to write in real-world settings by the way. I infinitely prefer fictional ones haha.
Once I got going, however, and especially once I got my characters into the fictional part of the setting, everything sped up a lot. It also helped that I did the Fellowship of the Ring NaNoWriMo Word Crawl - or the first part of it anyway, it's a bit too much to do in one day haha, but I'm intending to finish it over the next few days - and that helped with my writing massively.
Overall, not my best day so far, but also not my worst, so that's good. And I'm really happy with where I got up to. 10k!!
Words Written: 3450 words
Thursday, November 4th
And we're officially back in business boysssss.
Today was a good day. I had pretty much nothing else to do today except for write, and it was great. It took me a little while to get started, but once I did, I had such a good time writing. On Wednesday, I pretty much got the hard parts out of the way, I got my characters into place and got everything going so that today, I could just go right ahead. Once I started writing, I literally just wrote and wrote and wrote.
I continued the Fellowship of the Ring Word Crawl from Wednesday and got up to Rivendell, which is where I stopped. That helped a lot, I think, but the words were also just coming to me today. I was having so much fun! I do think the Word Crawl pushed me into writing for longer than I might've done otherwise though, I wrote an extra few hundred words because I wanted to reach Rivendell when I might've stopped without it. But that's a good thing, more words are always a good thing.
Most of what I wrote today was a scene that has been in my mind for literally years. It was one of the most detailed parts of my braindump-organized-into-rough-chronological-order 'plan' because it was super important, it contains the payoff to a bunch of foreshadowing scattered through the rest of the book and it's massive. So, of course, I was excited to write it. It ended up being nothing like my plan really, but the important stuff was still there, just surrounded in completely different ideas.
A basilisk turned up. Didn't expect that, but hello.
Most of it took place in a dream, which might seem strange, but remember, dreams are magical in this story so...yes. That's all I'm going to say haha.
All in all, this was such a good day. I'm honestly so happy with how it went today. Are there issues with what I've written? Yes, but it's not anywhere near as bad as it could've been and I actually managed to sort out and fix some problems that came up in my plot and world as I wrote today, and some things connected and came together that I didn't plan for or expect which made my whole story make more sense, so that was great.
Words Written: 5408 words
Friday, November 5th
So I might be noticing a bit of a trend.
I can write tons one day, be super productive, and absolutely slay my goal...and the next, I'm struggling to get any words out at all.
Today was one of those days. It seems to be that if I do a 5k day, the next day I'll always struggle and I struggled more today than I did on Tuesday. It doesn't help that this part of the novel is...much more blurry to me and I was having to do a lot of telling just to move the story along. Which isn't necessarily to mean in a bad way, although there's plenty of bad telling in there too, but rather that I've reached a point in the story where I need to skip over events. The things happening were important to both plot and flow, but I needed to zero in on specific parts and not just spend yonks describing them arriving at their new location and searching for hours through books in detail. It was challenging, but I'm out of that bit now so...hopefully all goes better tomorrow.
I did come back to my document to write for the first time today to find this typo, which I thought was pretty funny, so there's that.
that was supposed to be 'walls', by the way
All in all, this ended up being my worst day thus far for word count, but I still got in 1k, so I'm at least glad for that.
Also, it was Bonfire Night! Which we didn't actively celebrate because our church still isn't putting on our Bonfire Night celebration because of Covid, but we're planning to celebrate a week on Saturday. Either way, didn't have any impact on my writing, but I still wanted to mention it. Bonfire Night!
Words Written: 1027 words
Saturday, November 6th
This day started out badly, for writing specifically. I got up, got all of my other stuff done and sat down to write...and it was agonising. In this scene, I had to have a character encounter my antagonist, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't think of a natural, organic way to write it. It was a real challenge.
By the time it was four in the afternoon, I'd managed to scrape out a thousand words but that was it.
But then I hit a turning point. My sister - who is also doing NaNoWriMo this year for the first time! - agreed to do some writing sprints with me and we sat together to write for awhile. It was so helpful! This, along with finally getting past the above scene and into some Solid Bants, managed to actually get me absorbed in my writing to the point that I was able to get out a solid number of words!
It was all very exciting. I also got to introduce - properly - two characters I've been excited to introduce, Haneul's sister and best friend from back home in Korea. I do think that in edits, I might need to move this scene earlier, because tbh, it doesn't really work that his best friend doesn't get mentioned at all until this point in the novel - because I didn't even create him until I was like 60k words in haha - and that his sister doesn't get to make an actual appearance beyond texts until here, but meh. That's a problem for Future Me to deal with.
As Current Drafting Me, I got to have fun with an entirely new dynamic that came out far better than I planned for. It was so much fun.
Also, I switched up my formatting for this draft because I felt like it and sometimes doing that helps my brain work better for some reason, so yes. That's why it's different here to up above. In case you were wondering, which I'm sure you weren't.
All in all, today started out badly, but ended up great. Even though I didn't quite get as many words as on Thursday, I still got a lot done and I'm really happy with my final word count.
Words Written: 3480 words
This NaNoWriMo, I decided to take Sundays off from writing to give myself a break and to be able to properly focus on the Sabbath and honour it properly. So, no words for that day, which brings us to the official end of this first week of NaNo!
NaNoWriMo Current Word Count: 20008 words
Overall Novel Word Count: 102399 words
And we're not even done with Act 2 yet, hahaha *sobs*.
Overall, this was a great start to NaNo. I'm super happy with my final word count for the week. I'm a solid 10k or more ahead of where I need to be, so I have wiggle-room if I get sick or have a bad mental health day or whatever in the rest of the month, which is perfect. It also means that, hopefully, I'm far enough ahead to be able to complete Project Wales this month, even if it does end up being 140k words long, which is good.
Please be forgiving of the snippets I included in this post. This is all first draft stuff, remember.
How did your NaNoWriMo go, if you're doing NaNo? Has it been good or have you been struggling? If you're not, how is it going with whatever projects you're working on at the moment? Comment below and let me know.
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