NaNoWrimo: Week One Updates!

The season of NaNoWriMo is upon us! Each week I plan on updating on how I have been doing, my story progress, and my experience as a whole. For anyone who is unsure what NaNoWriMo is, it's a yearly challenge where you're encouraged to write 50K words in a month because that evens out to a short novel length. So you're basically writing a book in a month. Each day the goal is to write 1,667 words a day till the end. I have been participating in NaNoWriMo for seven years now but I have only "won" (which meansI wrote 50K in the month, it's not an actual contest to win a prize. The prize is your novel.) three times. So it's challenging, but I am taking it more seriously. For more information I recommend checking out their website, www.nanowrimo.org.

 So, let's get into how this first week of 2017's NaNoWriMo was for me!

Okay! So like I said, I am taking this more seriously than I ever have before. When I did it previously it was mostly a thing to do because others were doing it. I have always loved writing but I have never really loved my story ideas until this year. Here are my stats so far.

Other than my daily word counts, my average words per day have been about 2,328, I have 33,704 words to go to "win" NaNoWriMo (however I have a feeling it may take longer to finish the story) and if I keep it up at this pace I could win by November 22.


So as you can see, this week has gone exceptionally well for me when it comes to getting words down on the paper. Although I am partially pantsing the entire thing (no outline, but a general idea of where I want things to go) I am really excited about my story. How I describe it to people is the CW's Supernatural mixed with Disney's Frozen and the movie The Craft.  Which honestly sounds really cool to me which is why I wanted to write it. I'm really enjoying the characters and the story, which is something I haven't experienced (at least to this degree) while writing a NaNo project.

What is really cool is that my fiancé Matt is also participating which makes it all the more fun. We have been spending chunks of our days together writing. It's been a cool bonding experience that I honestly am so happy. We have been reading each other's stories, helping each other when we get stumped or just need to bounce ideas off each other, and we keep each other motivated to keep going.

Because it's the first time we both have been taking it seriously, we even made book covers. Which was a lot of fun and for me it makes it look more real on the NaNoWriMo website. Plus it was a lot of fun making a cover.

Overall so far I have been optimistic, which has helped me stay on top of my word count but I know week three is the week I have the hardest with. I think that is why I have been pushing to make sure I have more words than needed, just in case I am struggling. I know having my fiancé doing it with me will keep me motivated to keep writing but I like having the back up just in case.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? How has your first week gone? If you want to be writing buddies on the site my username is OwlTown21, I'd love to have more writing buddies! You're welcome to message me on there or comment below if you want to talk all things writing. Also, I'll link a twitter thread I have going on here, which is just my daily updates and things I am thinking while writing, if anyone is interested in that. Good luck with week two!

Thanks for reading!