The first week of NaNoWriMo is over and I wanted to do a little post this morning to share my progress.
NaNoWriMo stands for Nation Novel Writing Month and it takes place in the month of November. The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel.
I have had this idea for a novel rattling around in my brain since May now, but just never got round to writing anything for it. With the second lockdown in the UK being announced to take place during November, I thought what a perfect time to start working on a new project.
To give a little background about this project while also giving away absolutely nothing… When I was about sixteen, I started writing this contemporary young adult novel. Back then, I was so proud of it and had a clear goal. I have no idea how many words I actually wrote towards it for the year and a bit I was working on it, but I wrote twenty-three chapters. I ended up putting the piece to one side because I completely fell out of love for the idea. There were so many issues when it came to the piece – not just with the writing, but the content. The content ended up being a little problematic that I have become very ashamed of over the years. However, I still had a great love for the main characters and ever since I put the piece aside in about 2015, they have been just waiting in my brain for me to find something to do with them.
In May, something clicked in my brain and I found the story that I wanted to use them for. I have pulled them out of the story before, but I have taken them down a completely different route. I have developed the characters more thoroughly this time round too. Like the first draft, I have focused it around mental health, but this time, I have done a lot more research and I am being a lot more mindful. All together, I feel so much better about this now. Friday night, I actually dug out my folder where I’ve kept the first draft and read through the first couple of chapters. The entire time I was cringing at it and honestly so shocked at what I thought was okay to include back in 2013. Incredibly grateful I have grown and learnt a lot since then.
Moving on to the progress during the week. I started off strong. I’m going to list my word count for each day:
Sunday 1st: 1703
Monday 2nd: 2392
Tuesday 3rd: 925
Wednesday 4th: 0
Thursday 5th: 2009
Friday 6th: 2999
Saturday 7th: 1857
As you can see, I have managed to hit to word count of 1,667 every day except Tuesday and Wednesday. These were the only days that I was able to work. With the impending lockdown, I was working longer days on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’m not being too hard on myself for not being able to reach the goal them two days. I think especially as I know that I definitely will not be working for the rest of December, it makes it easy to know that I will have time to focus on NaNoWriMo.
I have since been able to catch back up with myself. So, despite having those two days where the target wasn’t met, I am back on track to finish the 50,000 words by the end of November.
I am really impressed and proud of myself for managing to write a total of 11,885 words so far. It has been so long since I have written this much fiction. In recent years, I have been focusing on my poetry so much that fiction has taken a backseat. It feels really good to explore this genre again. Though, I am definitely very rusty. I am currently living by the rule of that the first drafts only purpose is to exist. It is not meant to be good and it is not ever going to be a master piece; I just simply need it to exist so that later on I can edit it. I’m feeling confident so far and I hope that next week I can give a similiar update!
Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo? How are you doing?
Kira Jeanette 
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