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NaNoWriMo 2017... Working the Numbers

Hello all!

National Novel Writers Month is coming up in November and this is the time of the year where I like to start plotting out my goals for that month!

First off, although we are given a full month to complete our 50K word project, reality has proven (time and again) that this author really has about 25 days to make it happen. That works out to a clean 2,000 words a day to hit the goal.

(I aim for the 2,200 to plan for the burn-out / sickness / to-do-list days)

Secondly, This year is going to be different from other years. NaNoWriMo is a time for me to play around in new arenas. I try different genres, or new story arcs. This year I'm sticking to the Greenshore world. It's been too much fun plotting and writing out the first five books of the series and that is where my brain naturally goes to.

Third, in writing the Greenshore books, I've got Book 1 down to beta reader edits and Book 2 at a VERY rough draft of 27,000 words. My plan for NaNoWriMo is to hammer out Books 3 & 4 to hit the rough draft word count of 25,000-ish words (each). With the plotting done, that's about 2 chapters a day in writing. That equates to roughly 1,000 words per chapter.

I try to treat each chapter like it's own short story, thus the need to play the roll of a 'planner'. The month of October is going to see me wandering through the individual bullet points that I've created for each chapter, changing those points into workable plans for writing. This also works out to roughly 2 chapters a day for October.

Finally, there is the element of TIME. I'm an early morning keyboard and coffee kind of author who has roughly 2 hours to hammer out each day. That works out to about 17 words per minute to hit the 2,000 word / day goal. It sounds WAAAAaaaaaayyyyy easy, right?

-Dave

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