Well… Nano is officially on and despite my earlier bravado, I am somewhat concerned. I just started a new job on October 1st with a brand-new company. Oddly, that has meant that my focus isn’t quite on Nano which means that I’m not quite as prepared as I would like to be.
Still, even though I have some butterflies flitting around in my stomach, I am excited at the opportunity to write another book. I was out for my mid-day stroll with a friend of mine and we were talking about my last Nano experience. As we were talking I realized just how much it meant to me. I know this one will be even better.
As I’m writing this post, I’m already logged into the local Nano IRC chatroom. This chatroom was witness to some truly magnificent Word Wars (including one where yours truly was forced to humble another member of SWN). Besides being a place to improve productivity, it was also a great venue to network. I met several people who I would never have known otherwise. People who I definitely look forward to seeing again this year.
So far, things are looking a bit slow on the old IRC, but I suspect that it’s because people like Mr. Kite are going through the stretching exercises, likely accompanied with much muttering and chanting. Me, I’m taking these moments to reacquaint myself with commands and some of the more colorful characters from last year.
Anyway, enough rambling… let’s talk strategy for a moment here.
For those of us who have read any writing self-help books, one message has probably been common in every book: write a little everyday. Why, if you only wrote 300 words per day, every day, you would have more than 109,000 words written in a single year. That’s only slightly more than 1 page per day.
Doesn’t sound like much does it? Sounds almost possible, doesn’t it? I’m here to say it absolutely is. Last year I was averaging about 5 pages per day. 20 days later, I hit my 50K words.
This year, I expect more of the same… I just hope I don’t have to work too many late nights with the new job.
With that, I wish all the participants good luck and I’ll keep you posted as to my progress.
