This was, possibly, my easiest year doing NaNoWriMo. I struggled last year to make my word count, but last year I was playing by the rules and this year I did NaNoRebel again–so much more pleasant and enjoyable!

I really only wrote during 16 days or so this year. And some of those days I only wrote somewhere between a dozen and a thousand words. If you look at my bar chart, you can see my daily progress, or lack thereof. Much different from last year’s, when one of my goals was to write at least 500 words every single day.

During the handful of write-ins I attended on various Fridays and Mondays, I got several thousand words written. But my big accomplishments were on Sundays. I didn’t do much of anything but stay in my PJs and write every Sunday in November, so you can see the huge leaps in word count on those days. Then I didn’t write much during the following week. Those were big writing days, where I did a lot of work, but it really feels to me like I managed to get through November only writing for a few days in total and hitting 50,000 words naturally, without much effort at all.

During the final week of November, I worked on:

• BBC Sherlock fanfiction- finished the story I started earlier in the month. It turned out pretty good, I think.
• YA Paranormal Novel- I started a difficult moment in the story and it’s stalled a little bit. But I’m still feeling good about how much I got written in this novel and I look forward to continuing to work on it next year.
• Marvel Big Bang Fanfic- I got past the 15,000 word mark on it and came up with a bunch of great scenes. I’m still not feeling it as a full story yet, but I’m getting closer. I think I need to take all the scenes, put them on index cards, and figure out what needs to be filled in to make it a complete story.

Congrats to all the other winners out there and everyone who even attempted NaNoWriMo. It’s still more words written than you had when you started!

My second week of NaNoWriMo has gone pretty well. I hit 25,000, the halfway mark in words, a few days short of the halfway mark in days. So I’m right on track toward finishing on time or even a little early.

I’m not writing very much during the weeks still, but I’m making great progress on weekends and on write-ins I’m hosting on Mondays after work and Fridays after work.

This week, I worked on three projects:

• Started a super-kinky BBC Sherlock fanfiction I’ve been wanting to get out of my head for a little while now
• Got to chapter 3 of my paranormal YA novel before I started to lose steam. So I skipped ahead a little in the story to a big moment and the story is flowing once again. I’m really enjoying it. But pretty soon something awful is going to happen to my main character–I’ve never experienced it nor do I know anyone who has, so I worry my descriptions of it will not be realistic. I’m going to power through and just hope it’s not too overly dramatic
• Got about 5,000 words written in my Marvel fanfiction (about a third of the way through my goal for the first part). I started writing it backward; writing one scene that references something I hadn’t written, then writing that scene and mentioning something that happens before that, and going back to write that (and so on). Maybe I should have just started the whole thing at the end!

Heading into week 3, I should be able to hit 30,000 easily enough and power through. 30,000-45,000 is usually the part where I start to slow down. But I’ve got some write-ins scheduled, both in person and online.