My NotReallyNaNoWriMo 2011

I wrestled quite a bit about whether to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, because there is so much going on during the month of November.  SS and I will be in Florida for a week, for our Commitment Ceremony.  We’ve not only been planning the ceremony and reception for months, but now, of course, we are also planning a trip, and all the little details for both are more time-consuming than I realized they would be.

Then, when we are in Florida, I will want all of my attention to be on our vacation and visiting with family and friends, and of course, on our wedding day.  So, if I were to participate, I would have only 23 days available to do it, out of the 30 days in the month, which would mean writing an average of 2,174 words a day.  Not impossible, but quite a push, for me.

Ah, but then I remembered that I will be on a work-deadline for the last several days of November, and we’ll be cooking on Thanksgiving and having my father-in-law over, so I won’t want to be writing on that day.  (In the past, I lived alone and would spend part of Thanksgiving Day with the family at Sister’s, but I would write for a good part of the day, as well.)

That brings my available writing days to 16, meaning I would have to average over 3100 words each day, and that really is not realistic for me.  Not even if I didn’t have to work, too, and I do.  I’ve had days of writing that many words or more, but not consistently.

But.

While knowing, with the logical side of my brain, that it just isn’t feasible for this year, I still. want. to. write.

I’ve participated for the last seven years.  This would be my eighth.  It has become a part of my year, and a part of me.  As soon as the weather begins to turn (or, in Florida, when it would become less humid and a slight bit cooler) for Fall, my inner plotter starts to run on autopilot, thinking about what to write.

I considered participating with the knowledge that I wouldn’t hit the 50,000 word mark, but if I did that, I would have a blue (“participated”) circle for the year on my NaNo profile without a corresponding purple (“won”) circle, and I think that would bug me for years to come, especially since it took me five years before I started winning.

So.

I decided to be a supporter this year, which means I will donate to NaNoWriMo and will be here to cheer on everyone else who is participating, but I won’t be an official participant.

And to satisfy the part of me that really wants to write, I will spend a portion of each of the 16 days I have available working toward finishing one of my existing-but-unfinished novels.

My goal is to add 16,000 words in those 16 days.  I should be able to handle 1000 words a day.

Since I won’t be tracking my word count on the NaNoWriMo site, I made a speadsheet to track it:

Gotta love Google Docs.  Every time I update my spreadsheet, it will automatically republish here.

I put in the beginning word count based on the word count of the novel when I begin for November 1.  Each day, I’ll update the current word count, and if I did the formulas right, the spreadsheet will calculate how many words I wrote each day, how many words I have left to my goal, what percentage of my goal I have reached so far, and the average number of words it will take per day to reach the goal by the day before Thanksgiving, when I will stop writing.

Wish me luck!

Update: Notice all those zeros on that spreadsheet? You’re right; I didn’t write after all. See my newer post here. Oh well, I’ll participate in NaNo in November of 2012, for sure, and I’ll make up for the skipped year!

 

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