If the title of this post confuses you, it’s probably because you’re familiar with the word ‘NaNoWriMo’ but not what the word actually stands for. If this is the case, I’ll put you out of your misery. No, not like that. I’ll just explain that NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, so my ‘slightly less no’ reference is to the ‘Novel’ bit of the equation.
I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo at all this year. Why put myself through the unnecessary stress during one of my busiest months of the year, I asked myself? What did I have to prove?
Well, nothing. But since my current quest is to prove that the first published novel wasn’t just an anomaly, and that I’m not a one-trick wonder, it seemed that a target to get on with fiction and not leave it languishing behind the non-fiction Might Be No Bad Thing. So, abracadabra… word meters have once again invaded the right-hand sidebar.
However, you’ll notice that my goal isn’t to write 50,000 words of a novel, but to write 50,000 in total in November. I’m only aiming for 40,000 of them to be on the novel (although more would be great). The other 10,000 words will be offered at the shrine of non-fiction. I know they’ll get written because frankly, they have to be. It’s what I’m paid for.
Writing this had made me realise that not having a separate word meter for non-fiction is irritating me.
There. That’s better!
As of this afternoon, I’m a day behind on my total word count. That’s fine. I can live with that. Unexpectedly, tomorrow is going to be an all-day writing day, so let’s see if I can push that blue line eastwards!