Spoiler alter! I didn’t reach 50k. I knew I wouldn’t because November is a busy month, mainly with birthdays galore, but add to that everything that goes with launching a book and it’s pretty impressive I wrote anything.
Maybe I should have passed this year’s NaNo but I just can’t help myself. I love the NaNo community.
Planning
The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50k words in 30 days. This works out to roughly 1,667 words per day.
But, what if you can’t write every day. What if you know on certain days it will be near impossible to write? And, 30 days is a long month if never allow yourself a single break.
I made a calendar in Excel and put Y or N depending on if I could write or not. I think counted the Y, and worked out I could write on 18 days of the month. This meant on my writing days, I needed to achieve 2778 words.
How It Went…
Week 1, went well. I had planned for a day off for for going live with Holly but joined a World Indie Warriors writing sprint afterwards. I also planned a day off for my birthday but decided to celebrate by writing This put me ahead of target. I needed to hit 13,890 words and had 16,306 words.
Week 2, I allowed one day off for my son’s birthday so it didn’t impact my goal. But, I also skipped two planned writing days, and that put me behind. I needed to hit 30,558, but I only had 26,725. This is why in my mid point check in I said I was behind, even though I had more words than NaNo participants that were on target, because I knew I had less days than them to write.
Week 3, was not good. I had planned a day off for going live with Nicola. But, I agreed to an unplanned live with Lyndell. Then, I decided to sell my house and had to tidy up (everywhere) for the Estate Agent (and then we decided not to sell). Then our boiler broke and spent a whole evening trying to create a bath warm & deep enough to bathe. This resulted in my not writing on four days I planned to – not good. I needed to hit 47,226 words, and I had only reached 31,473 words.
Week 4, was getting close to my release date and I wanted to give it my full attention. I only planned to write on one day and I did. This week involved pre-recording a radio interview. I also attempted to migrate my website myself from one server to another, and transfer my domain to the new location. It wasn’t smooth sailing. I also attended a full online writing festival, Indie Fire. I needed to reach 50,000 words but only had 38,643. I could have written some evenings but I didn’t want to burn out.
Week 5, is just the last two days of the month.
Was It A Success?
I didn’t get 50k words, so I failed NaNoWriMo. But…
My big goal for this year was to publish Ocean Heart, and I wasn’t going to let NaNo ruin that. If NaNo had distracted me from my launch then it would have been an epic fail.
When I set out to do NaNo this year, I just wanted to get back into Sky Heart. I achieved that. To me, personally, that makes this NaNo a success.
What’s Next?
I’m going to enjoy my book release week as I need to recharge and revel in this long awaited moment.
I will continuing working on finishing Sky Heart, book 2 in The Soul Heart Series. I’m hoping the first draft will be ready for Betas by the end of January.
I’ve created a work in progress cover, to visualise achieving my goal. Do you like it?
I’m also working on two Novellas. I’m hoping with these being shorter they’ll be quicker to get out & help with the wait for Sky Heart. I’ll announce those once I have a title.
All Author Cover Contest
Ocean Heart is currently entered in the All Author December 2020 Cover Contest. If you like the cover of Ocean Heart please vote for it.
[kofi]
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