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How I Won NaNoWriMo 2020 in 9 Days
My motivation to win on a passion project and set a new personal record
No, I’m not kidding. You can count my words over on Wattpad if you really want. I posted the rough draft as I wrote it.
There’s a method behind my madness — I promise it’s not just madness. 2020 marked the second time in three years that I’ve participated while being able to write full time. The first time was when I discovered the writing challenge in 2018. I front-loaded all of my grad school work and finished that before the month started which gave me the freedom to only worry about writing and a full-time job. This year I have the ability to write every day with only minor distractions like house hunting and a puppy.
Here is a breakdown of my word count:
- 10,418 — it’s a Sunday. What else am I gonna do? My most daily words came in 2018 with 18K. I doubt I’ll ever get that close again.
- 6,776 — I was actually disappointed despite my goal of writing 5K+ a day.
- 7,727 — a more respectable number.
- 7,208 — some chapters just don’t hit the same.
- 2,740 — woof. This was day 1 of a migraine.
- 5,086 — another migraine, but I drugged myself up at about 4:30AM and had a moment of clarity. I pushed myself in the first few hours knowing I’d crash later.
- 6 — yeah, I wrote just a single sentence. We were house hunting all morning and I came home emotionally exhausted. But I believe in streaks so I wrote my sentence.
- 3,379 — I was so distracted all day worried about the offer we made on a house… we didn’t get it.
- 7,255 — Finish line! I actually allowed myself to get distracted in the morning, declaring I’d cross the 50K mark on my book release day for a different series. I’m all about combining celebrations, but when I was just 866 words short at 9PM, I couldn’t let it go to waste. I wrote another chapter.
On a side note, my previous record was writing my 50K in 10 days.
You can check out these five strategies that helped me keep my word count high this month.
