Ok, technically the halfway mark was yesterday, but a) time zones exist and b) writing is creative so I’m being creative with my dates. Lets move along.

 

I’ve been a member of NaNoWriMo since 2005. I haven’t participated every year. I sometimes didn’t even mark myself as a participant in years I did it. 

 

But every year that I tried it, I’ve failed. This year feels different. I usually crap out (the technical term) around day 5 or 6. Often I blame this on my birthday being on the 3rd so I lose momentum. 

 

The Halfway Mark of NaNoWriMo 2019

 

This year though I’m doing well. I am around 2000 words behind on the target to hit 50k, but that’s not worrying me too much. I knew I had other things going on in November and that I wouldn’t hit 1667 words every single day. In fact next week there’s a chance of three straight days where I will not be writing due to other things happening. 

 

But that’s what weekends are for, right? Catching up, getting ahead. 

 

I’m not really sure what has made me so much more confident that I can hit 50k this time. I wish I knew what triggered the switch in my brain (on any task!) from AAHH IMPOSSIBLE to SURE YEAH THATS DOABLE WHATEVER. Maybe it’s trying and “failing”. I mean that’s basically the learning process right?

 

I’d like to be useful and say “I did this and this and it magically doubled my writing ability while urinating into a sample cup doing cartwheels” but you already know I’m more of an ask questions blogger than answer questions. 

 

One thing I have tried is joining in word sprints. It has helped about half the time. Word sprints are run from a twitter account – it’s pretty simple. They say something like “lets write for 15min from 10 past the hour, GO” and your goal is to add as many words as you can in that time. Then you can report back in and see how you go and chat to other writers who are sprinting with you. They sometimes also give you optional prompts to write to in case you need a boost. 

 

I think I managed a #1k30 once – that’s 1000 words in 30mins. They seem to be a holy grail of NaNo Word Sprints, obviously because they get your word count up!!

 

Other days I’ve tried to sprint and ended up just staring at twitter. So…no real advice here at all other than keep trying things.

 

(Also, can I count this as some of todays word count?)

 

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Any tips or advice or ideas for llama hats to share?