I’m a WriMo Rebel Ninja

Well here it is – the 1st of November – the start of NaNoWriMo. It’s not even lunchtime yet and I’ve already surpassed my word count goal for today!

As of this blog post, I have 5,227 words of my 50,000 word goal done. Hot Damn! It’s only Day 1 and I’m already at 10% there! Woo hoo! Only 44,773 words left to go before the end of November!

Yes folks, I am tooting my own horn because I am proud of me. This is my first year and I’m having an absolute blast! I sat down at my computer a few hours ago and started typing. Sure, I had an outline before I started, but that’s well within the rules of the game. You can develop characters, outline your novel, and do all the research you want prior to Nov. 1st – but you cannot write a single word of your manuscript until the clock strikes midnight Halloween night.

So this morning, with my favorite coffee cup in hand and a pile of notebooks, I sat down to get started. I took a break for a little while to hop onto Twitter to see what all the other #nanowrimo folks were up to and such. When I came back to my Word document to get back at it, I noticed my word count. I was sure I was seeing double. Surely it said 527 words, not 5,227. But no, it really is 5,227 words. I’m such a damn good WriMo Rebel ninja that I didn’t even notice myself creeping up to that 10% mark this morning.

If I were able to do this every morning, I’d hit that 50k mark in 10 days! Wow!

Okay, actually, it’s not that wow. I should probably confess…I write more than 40k a week as a freelance writer. 50k in a month is really child’s play by comparison. For those who know me in real life – that’s absolutely nothing compared to how much I can talk. Get me on a subject I know a lot about or have great interest in? I can talk you to death – seriously – for hours, even. (No comments from the Peanut Gallery, please – dear family o’ mine.) Since I tend to write the same way I talk, I could probably do way more than 50k for NaNo this year.

When I read other writers struggling just to hit their first thousand words this morning, I have to admit - I feel guilty. Like I’m somehow cheating because I opted to write a nonfiction book on a subject I know a lot about. Add in how much I’m used to writing on a daily basis and I really start to feel like a guilty cheat.

But still…even I’m impressed with myself this morning. There are several writers that have written even more than that this morning, and I commend them. They’re writing fiction, which is much, much harder than nonfiction in my eyes. Perhaps I should level the playing field and bump up my word count goal for NaNoWriMo.

Hmm…something to consider.

Whatcha think folks? What should my level-the-field word count goal be, given my “normal” workload of 40k+ a week?

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