National Novel Writing Month is this month. I’ve never participated — personally, I tend to see it as a bunch of fast writers getting together and celebrating that they can write fast, which isn’t something I feel a part of.

I’m still not participating this year, but in recognition of the month I’ve decided to keep my own sort of record of my writing this month. We’ll see how representative it ends up being, but it should be an interesting experiment. Each Friday, I’ll summarize my writing accomplishments for the week.

(Week 0 would have included only Friday the 1st, a day on which I did no writing)

First Week: Saturday the 2nd to Friday the 8th

I began this week on a vacation to Austin, Texas for the United States F1 Grand Prix, so all my writing was done on the train. The train affords an excellent opportunity to write, and I usually expect to write a chapter a day on a long train trip.

Tuesday, November 5th

One whole chapter, 3,361 words. Written in a single sitting of about 4 hours. After writing the chapter, I recharged my creative batteries by playing Cities: Skylines and having some dinner.

Wednesday, November 6th

One whole chapter, 1,925 words. This was a short chapter, so after writing it in a little under 3 hours I went on and finalized the chapter script for two chapters which had been left as outlines.

Friday, November 8th

Back home and rested up from the trip, I wrote another whole chapter, 2,464 words, in about two hours. This was one of the chapters I scripted on the train, so I had a good concept in mind of how I wanted it to start and unfold.

---

And that does it for my first week of my unofficial Novel Writing Month project. There’s no 50,000 word target, but I wrote 3 chapters and 7,750 words so far. I’m satisfied with that for a start.