NANOWRIMO 2017: THE WORKING NANO

HAPPY NANOWRIMO FRIENDS!

If you woke up this morning bright eyed and determined to start strong on day one of this crazy 50,000 word journey, high five. 

If you didn't, I completely understand. I almost didn't do it this year.

Almost.

A few weeks ago I saw an Instagram post from one of my writer friends saying that they were thinking of doing something called "reverse nano" which is basically modifying the word count to be really heavy at the beginning when you have a lot of inspiration and motivation and then slowly decreasing the word count to then be one word on day 30. 

Reading about this other way of doing nano got me thinking... What if I could develop a nano plan that fits with my full time work schedule and fits with how my writing routine normally works?

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Now enters a little history: Last nano was a pretty bad fail for me. I think I managed roughly 10,000 words, if that. And I felt completely awful and disappointed at the end of the month. So much that I was about 80% sure I was not going to do it this year or any year after that. Since last nano [working on the same project] I was able to add another 7,000 words to my novel in the midst of getting married and moving.

All of these words took place on my lunch breaks. I get an hour lunch break at my full time job and I could average between 1100-1300 words in that hour, depending on interruptions.

So, I played around with the idea of taking that average of 1,200 words per day on lunch and then how many words would then need to be written on the weekend to keep me up to speed for hitting 50,000 words on day 30.

Here's what I came up with:
MONDAYS: REST DAY / CATCH UP DAY
TUESDAY - FRIDAYS: 1,200 WORDS X 18 WEEKDAYS IN NOVEMBER

SATURDAYS: 3,550 WORDS X 4 SATURDAYS IN NOVEMBER

SUNDAYS: 3,550 WORDS X 4 SUNDAYS IN NOVEMBER

TOTAL WORDS: 50,000

If you are like me and work 40-45 hours a week or more and have the ability to type to your heart's content on your lunch break, this plan might work for you. Or if you naturally have more writing time on the weekends than you do during the week, this plan might work for you too!

I am really hoping this helps me reach 50,000 or get me close to that glorious number without feeling overwhelmed or behind.

Like all good things, I'm giving this plan the hashtag #theworkingnano

Feel free to create your own version of the plan or just tag along this month to see how it works for me :)

I'll let you all know how it goes!

Now get writing.

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