NaNoWriMo November 2022 Part 2: How it Went
If you didn’t read my first post at the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2022, check out that post here. Now that November is over, I wanted to follow up and share how my experience went. As stated in that post, this blog is a follow-up to share my experience with you and perhaps encourage you to do the challenge next year.
New Project Report: SCHEMING PEGASUS
The NaNoWriMo dashboard provides you with tools to track your progress as well as award you badges as you hit key milestones. Here is a screenshot of my dashboard and what I was able to accomplish this year.
Final Tracking Time and Wordcount
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel (50,000 words) during the month of November. The project that I started is going to be much longer than 50,000 words, but I still wanted to get as much writing done as possible. I reached the 50k word goal early, wrapping up on Thanksgiving. Since I had an extra week, I adjusted my goal to 60k and ended up with a final wordcount of 60,423 words. I spent 20 hours and 55 minutes working on this project, and my average daily wordcount was 2,014. You can see the full breakdown of my time, wordcount, and what chapters I was working on below. This is something I keep track of every day and it one trick that I use to push myself to hit my daily wordcount and to write every day.
This Year’s Experience
One thing that I learned this year was how you can make the effort of writing into a game. The things I like most about NaNoWriMo’s dashboard are the ways it helps you track your progress and offers small encouragements along the way. The little badges that you earn for reaching milestones were fun to earn and I found that on the days which were a little harder to write on that it gave me some additional motivation to keep going.
I don’t write full time and balancing responsibilities, work, family, and leisure, it can be a little hard some days to find time for my writing. But this is the life of most writers and it is one that I am happy to live. This challenge helped me establish a few new writing habits and also showed me that finding just a little more time every day can go a long way.
Stay tuned for further updates on this book project as well as other books which will be coming in 2023. And for all the aspiring writers out there, keep moving forward and good luck. You can do it!
