Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Thank you to everyone who has provided advice for approaching this adventure. It has been quite helpful.

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

While I am still pantsing for my first year (in case you aren’t familiar, that just means I have declared that I am writing this novel by the seat of my pants), I have put in a little preparation to know my character and the general setting of the story. I also have a general idea of what I generally want to happen. Notice how general my “planning” has been?

I did have a moment of mild panic earlier today when I realized that I hadn’t bothered to figure out how I wanted to start the story. This is when it was very helpful to have my husband participating in NaNoWriMo with me. He is pretty hardcore pantsing it, as he had only decided how to start his novel, but really has no idea where he is going with it beyond that. He started writing today before I did and he said he completely changed how he started his novel.

That made me realize I just needed to sit down and start the freakin’ thing trusting that the beginning would pop into my head. After all, starting with something that just popped into my head is better than not starting at all.

My rough goal is 2,000 words a day this month. To write 50,000 words in 30 days, the daily average should be about 1,667. I already know there will be a few days when I won’t be able to write, hence the daily goal of 2,000.

So far I have 766 words toward the goal of 2,000 for today. And I have to say that I am happy with the beginning of the story that popped into my head. It already sounds like something I would want to read, which is my main goal for this novel. I’m writing it for me. If I like it enough to edit and share it, then so be it. For now, I’m writing it as if I am the only one who will read it.

Time to get back to having fun with this story and increasing my word count. 🙂