Mostly Through NaNoWriMo Already...

I've mentioned the National Novel Writing Month, also called NaNoWriMo. Now that we're more than halfway through the month it means that if you're pacing yourself out, you should be over the 25,000 word mark, since by midnight of the last day in November you need 50,000 words to "win".

I am not doing NaNoWriMo because I started working on my own manuscript in September, and currently have a wordcount of 83,604 words; if I stopped to try competing in NaNoWriMo (the manuscript must be started from scratch on November 1st) I'd have lost my momentum for the work I'm trying to finish.

I try to get a little further on my work each day rather than hit a specific word count since I may become discouraged when I miss the count. I was curious, though, how I would have stacked up if I were competing. So I went back through some numbers I had recorded to get an approximate number of words I had added since November first, and I hit a not-to-bad 20,000 words!

Not bad, I think. I'd be only slightly behind if I were competing.

How are other people doing? Even if you're behind, the goal is to make progress. There are no penalties for not making the wordcount. If you're ahead, keep going! If you're lagging, don't give up!