Last year I took part in National Novel Writing Month and for the most part considered it a failure. I got nowhere close to the 50,000 word goal. It was simply too much writing for me to pump out that many words in one month, especially without the use of an outline.
Fast forward to last week, as I was scanning through my documents on Writely. For those of you not familiar with Writely, it is an online word processing application. Think Microsoft Word in a web browser. The beauty of Writely is that I can work on a story during lunch at work and work on the same document at home without having to carry around a silly USB drive or floppy drive.
Anyhow, as I was scanning my documents I came across my National Novel Writing Month attempt. Whatta ya know, I had close to 5,000 words! Compared to 50,000 words five grand is not pretty. However, compared to my meager writing output since my daughter was born, 5,000 seems like a miracle. So, I may take the time and see what I can make of this story. It needs some work, but at least it is a start.
Filed under: Writing
RSS - Posts
I know what you mean, Struggling Writer. I also find in terms of time I have completely reevaluated what “time to write” means now that I have a baby. In the days before Kiko was born, I couldn’t write unless I had a clear 4-hour stretch to myself. Now 15 minutes feels like a huge bonus.
Are you going to do NaNoWriMo this year? I have not yet participated. Not sure if I will…
Keep up the good work! It may not *seem* like you’ve accumulated much work when guestimating amounts, but when you sit down and start looking at word counts or number of pages written, more often than not you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Helen, I’m not sure if I will take part in NaNoWriMo or not. Maybe I will see if I can beat last year’s total.
Cat, thanks for the encouragement.
That is so awesome…
I remember not being able to write more than a 1,000 words without getting completely locked up. Great accomplishment!
Thanks Leo. I wish I had that type of output all the time.