WriMo Numbers 2005

I reached 50,000 words around 1:30 in the morning on Sunday. It would've made sense to wait until later Sunday morning (maybe after eight hours of sleep and a cup of coffee) to cross that imaginary finish line, but when one is so close that he or she can hear the imaginary crowd cheering, it's hard to stop. That vision alone should have been a sign that it was past my bedtime because as everybody knows, at that hour, even imaginary people are sound asleep.

This year's experience was different from those of previous years. Two years ago, I relied heavily on write-ins to motivate me. Sitting in the same room as others as we struggled individually, together, spurred me on. Last year, I relied heavily on adventure. The word count seemed easier because I focused on hitting 30 cafes in 30 days (which I later revised to 25 Cafes in 27 Days after the fact).

This year, I visited eight cafes, wrote a third of the novel on an actual computer (not my trusty Palm V) and forgot to kill Cliff. The only write-in I attended was on the first day of the month. While I've enjoyed the feeling of camaraderie I've gotten from write-ins, I've disliked the fact that my productivity has dropped with each successive gathering. Perhaps I'll feel differently next year.

Instead of relying on write-ins or adventure to keep me going this time around, I relied on myself, which feels good to say now, but definitely didn't feel good while I was going through it. Writing in isolation may work well for great authors, but it doesn't work so well for an ordinary scribbler like me. I need fresh air, sunlight, a cup of coffee, a little music and the general murmur of conversation.

I suppose the question now is if I will participate in NaNoWriMo next year. If I do, I suppose I should add a twist, make the challenge more difficult. Maybe next year I'll start with a plot instead of stumbling upon it halfway through. I recently read an interview with the producers of Lost where they describe their show as a road trip. They know they want to get from Los Angeles to New York City and they know, in general, the major cities they want to hit along the way. They just don't know the exact route they'll be taking. Adopting their road trip analogy, I already know I want to get from San Jose to Cooperstown. I just have to figure out a way to keep myself from accidentally ending up in Rio de Janeiro as I did this year.

As I've done in previous years, here is NaNoWriMo 2005 in numbers. Last year's statistics are shown in parentheses:

Words written: 50,165 (50,151)
Hours of writing: 34.75 (34.67)
Highest one-day count: 3,906 (4,560)
Lowest one-day count: 0 (280)
Percent of novel written on my PDA: 67 (96)
Least productive day of the week: Monday (Friday)
Number of writing days: 23 (27)
Number of zero-word days: 4 (0)
Cups of coffee consumed (above "normal"): 27 (27)
Pounds of Skittles eaten: 0.35 (0.5)

Congratulations to all of those novelists who have already finished. For everybody else who hasn't reached the finish line yet, keep it up! Keep going! As of right now, you still have about 36 hours to go, which is plenty of time to write 50,000 words.