NaNoWriMo 2019 | Week 1 Update

The first seven days of National Novel Writing Month 2019 have gone by – how are you doing? Hanging in there? Ready for more? Going out to stock up on your writing snacks? Getting some extra sleep? Whatever you’re doing to ready yourself for the next week of NaNoWriMo, I hope you take a little time to reflect on your progress so far.

Continue reading this update, or skip to:

• Introduction 
• Week 2 Update
• Week 3 Update
• Conclusion

Currently, I am at my apartment with no plans to work on my WIP until tomorrow. As I mention later on in this post, motivation is not coming as easy to me this year as it did last year. Plus, my brain is a little fried from learning everything there is to know for my new job. Anyway, in order for this post to not sound like one big complaint and/or gripe session, let’s keep it moving.

At the time of this being posted (8:45pm, on Friday, November 8th), I have written a total of 8,867 words. This puts me behind in terms of the 1,667 per day word count breakdown, but it’s not too shabby, considering my writing patterns over the past seven days.

Out of those past seven days, one of those days was a non-writing day (Day 4). I was going to count Day 5 as just-barely-a-writing day, but that would be selling myself short. Instead of saying I only wrote 237 words, I’m looking at it as I wrote 237 words! That’s 237 more words than what I managed to write during the majority of the days of this year! Mind over matter, mind over matter…

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All of my writing over the past week has been done here at home, after work. I started a new job last week, and while I absolutely love it, trainings and learning new processes and such are a little more draining than I expected them to be. Plus, with the end of Daylight Saving Time, my window for motivation – which is at its peak when the sun is up – is much smaller. So in short, my writing sort of feels like a chore. But I’m not too worried about that feeling; I just need to get out the kinks in my schedule (by creating a better one) and better sort my priorities list – a perfect project for this weekend.

Now as for my story itself, it is unfortunately another source of my lack of motivation. I’m just not loving what I’m writing. This was quite unexpected, since last year I felt overjoyed at the thought of my WIP and adding more to it. This year, it has felt like more work, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in writing, but for NaNoWriMo – at least in my case – it makes the 50,000 word goal feel like a higher reach.

So while a lot of my first week of my NaNoWriMo 2019 adventure has felt a little rough, I am feeling optimistic about both my word count goals and story goals. After work on Day 6, I read over parts of my WIP that I had written last year, and made notes on which plot points and/or characters could use more development and/or explanation. Doing that put me back into that mindset I had last November – one of joy and excitement – and I’m feeling much more certain that I haven’t hit a dead end with my story, that there’s still plenty more ideas brewing in my head.

I will end this post by saying that my goal for the weekend is to cross the 10,000 word mark, and hopefully reach at least 12,000 words. And of course, plan an effective writing schedule for the next couple of weeks. I hope you have fared a bit better than I have in terms of writing progress, and if you’re in a rut similar to the one I’ve been in, I encourage you to keep plugging along. Think outside the box, seek out general writing prompts that you can apply to your WIP, and just keep writing.

Share your first week experiences below, and/or your tips on getting out of a writing rut.