This is going to be a non humourous, self congratulatory post. You see, this year I entered the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) contest. In my last post before November began, I outlined my strategy of trying to write a set of short stories rather than a novel and my writing goal each day would be to complete one computer page (approximately 600 words or 2 paperback pages).
But my sister Laurel L. Russwurm (Now a 3 times NaNoWriMo winner) suggested that I at least try the 1667 words per day. I had been hesitant to commit because even though I’ve written off and on for 15 years my largest output in a day was 3 computer pages or basically the output I would have to do every day for NaNoWriMo. I agreed to at least start off with that as my goal.
The first and second day I succeeded both times and indeed tried to push myself even further writing 4 pages and 3 ½ pages respectively. I felt funny that second evening, like I was pushing myself too hard and that last page or ½ page seemed to take much longer per word. So for the rest of the contest I mostly did my 3 pages and left it at that.
So 3 pages was my goal and it actually works out to something like 2000 words. I only missed 3 days and finished a few days ahead of time. So I’m unexpectedly happy with my November output.
One final note. I still haven’t written a full novel. But I’ve heard of the mid novel lull where writers strain to put interesting things on the page. I missed this challenge by writing short stories. However I think the writing of short stories is just as hard because I had to restart 6 times and this beginning phase slowed down my progress by quite a bit. Next year I am going to try the novel. I have a novel in mind that is related to my short stories.
Congratulations to all the winners of NaNoWriMo and to all those people who have won just by participating.
