NaNoWriMo Year 1 - 2005

Most people don't know what I mean when I say NaNoWriMo. Sounds like I'm greeting people who've watched Mork and Mindy in the past, but what it stands for is National Novel Writing Month. Each November, thousands of people from around the world participate in a challenge to write out 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. I have done this for the past 7 years now (2012 will be my 8th) and have succeeded each year.

I figured I'd do a little countdown to NaNo by giving a little bit of info on each year I participated.

My first year of NaNo was the craziest. My wife and I had just gotten married June 30th of that year, and I was still working in a typical 9-5 job as opposed to writing full time like I do now. I felt insane and a little messed up in the head to attempt to write 50,000 words in a month, but I went for it not really sure what to expect. My project that year was Expired Reality: Betrayal in Crystal City - the third novel in my young adult series. Betrayal in Crystal City has yet to be published (it is the next project on my docket after this year's NaNo novel), and it has gone through many revisions since its initial write-up. In fact, the name has changed now to Crystal City, but I'm almost pretty sure that will change before the book is officially published.

That year, I remember spreading out my NaNo writing according to the traditional formula: 50,000 words / 30 days in November = 1666.666666666667 words per day. If I remember right, I forgot to factor in that I don't write or do any type of work on Sundays, and I forgot to factor in days when we had extra plans in the evenings, like dinner with friends or date nights. It was a challenge that first year, but victory tasted sweet when I was able to print out my winner's certificate at the end of the month. My final word count at the end of that November was 50,094.