NaNoWriMo Day 3
First of all, let me apologize to anyone who got a warning about malware on this site over the past day or so. My site was hacked a few months ago, and while I thought the problem was entirely fixed, there was still one file that, while dormant, hadn’t been fixed. Somehow Google picked up on that file and flagged the site. It’s all fixed now and hopefully it won’t happen again. Thanks to my husband, Mike Moffit, for taking the time to fix it today so I could focus on work and NaNoWriMo!
So here we are on day 3 of NaNoWriMo. I’m currently sitting at around 2200 words. The first day, I wrote nothing. November 1st was the day from hell around here, so it wasn’t surprising that NaNo got sidetracked. Yesterday I finally settled on an idea and started writing, managing about 300 words. Today I finally hit my daily word count goal, plus an extra 100+ words to help catch up on the two days I missed (I have to write about 115 extra words per day to make up for the two days when I basically wrote nothing).
My secret weapon so far: Write or Die. Enter the number of words you want to write and a time limit, and Write or Die will keep track of both. This morning I wrote 600+ words in 15 minutes (goal was 200 in 15 minutes), and then this evening I wrote a little over 1000 words in 24 minutes (goal was 1000 in 30 minutes). If you don’t write for more than 15 seconds or so, the screen starts turning red, reminding you to get those words down. You can set it on kamikaze mode, where I guess it will delete your words if you don’t reach your goal (not ready to try that one yet). If you’re limited in the amount of time you can spend on NaNo, this is a great tool to make sure you use your time wisely.
My final idea is a rewrite of a steampunk clusterfu—I mean, novel, that I wrote a couple years ago. I’ve kept one original character pretty much in-tact, and am using the name of another character with a few of her original traits, but other than that it’s a completely new story. I’m hoping to post an excerpt or two this weekend, but I want to get a bit more down on paper before I start sharing.
How’s everyone else doing for NaNo? Any tips or tricks? Share ‘em in the comments!
