Good Days, Bad Days - Just Keep Writing

The first year I took part in the Nanowrimo challenge I didn't think I'd be able to manage the 50,000 words in time. Added into the sheer total number of words that needed to be put down, I joined the challenge 11 days into it that year. I still managed it and it did change my outlook on life, or rather on my writing life.

It would now be fair to say that I do Nanowrimo every single month. Even with two small children I manage at least 75,000 words a month, every month, on various projects. When I am lucky enough to get more help with the children, and grab more dedicated writing time, that number shoots up to 150,000 words or more in the course of a month. In a little over 30 days, including 5 days taken off for a trip where I never opened my lap top, I managed to finish an 82,000 word draft on a paranormal erotic romance.

It sounds like a lot, but I know I'm not the only one doing this. There are a lot of professional writers who manage this and for me it was Nanowrimo 4 years ago that provided the kick off for me.

Now why does it work?

Because it teaches you bum in chair, fingers on keyboard. It teaches a habit and one that is needed for a professional writer.

I've learned that, unless I know I'm hitting burn out point, I must write every single day. Those 5 days I took off were the first since April, and that April time off had been because I'd been at Romance Times in Houston. (This year the convention is in Pittsburgh and I plan on attending again with my husband). I spent the trip there and back relaxing and talking with my husband and the trip back with my nose in various books. A pattern that might well be repeated for the next convention. I also know I have a convention coming up in Iowa during the first weekend of November where I'm a speaker as well as helping to run a booth in the dealers room, so I'll be taking a fair portion of those three days off as well.

So I try to write every day, even if it's just 100 words.

What good is 100 hundred words?

A little math for you.

100 words a day for 365 days is 36,500 words. So in two years you have a category length novel.

500 words a day for a year is 182,500 words. Considering the fact that the average novel is between 90,000 and 140,000 words long, you've got a novel in the space of a year, or perhaps two.

1000 words a day? Within 100 days you have the first draft of a novel. That's it. 100 days. If you're wondering how a professional writer for someone like Harlequin, Tor, or other houses manages to see two or more books published in a year, that's how. By writing a set minimum amount every day.

So how many words a day do you have to write in order to hit 50,000 for Nanowrimo, and still meet the 30 day deadline?

1667 words or more a day. That's it.

If you break it down to a daily goal it's really not that much.

Oh, I know the arguments. You're busy. You work. You have kids. Commitments. Who could really do it?

I do, in between housework, running around after two children, one of whom is still too young to be at school, doing the meals, not killing said children, being mum, and being a wife when my husband came in. Between all of that I still managed to type out 4014 words on my current manuscript.

Plus this article.

Plus a book review.

Plus emails.

For me Nanowrimo truly has become a montly event, and I still manage to juggle everything else I have to do in order to be a wife and mother.

So what's your excuse?