Okay as you can see by the counter in my sidebar, I reached 5004 words last night. I did that by spending 6 hours at a write in on Monday and two 45 minute writing sprints on Tuesday.

The trick here is to figure out how many words you can do in an alloted period of time and set a few of those times aside each day. The Nano website suggests something like around 1600 words a day for thirty days. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, because I don’t want to write for all thirty days, instead I like to take Sundays off to spend with family. And even though our extended family lives out of state, I still would not prefer to spend Thanksgiving writing. The result of these two conditions is that I neeed to write 2000 words a day to keep on track. So already I have added extra load, but hen I have to figure in days like today when I know I will have little to no time to write. Consequently on the days I do  have more time I have to find creative ways to get my word count even higher.

It helps to know how many words I can type in a given period of time. Right now I can do about 1000 to 1500 words in 30 – 45 minutes, the determining factors being, where I am working, am I at home alone or with family and distractions running around or someplace with a group of writers all with the same goal I have.

One other note, as the month progressess my typing and focus will get better and faster so at the end of the month I can figure on getting 2000 + words in the same amount of time.

So the key here is to know your temporary limits and schedule yourself around them.

By tonight and going into tomorrow I plan on having 6000+ words and to be building up the bank for the rest of the month. Like I said before I already have 5000 words going into today and I could sit on my laurels and just do the 1000 to put me at today’s suggested goal, but if I can do better and I know I can later today than I will. So I’ll see you tomorrow and let you know how things are going.

Keep Writing

Chris