Saturday 7 December 2013

Number crunching


 I’m pleased I didn’t attempt NaNoWriMo this year because I completely failed my ‘easier’ challenge to write 1,000 words a day throughout November. My grand total for the month was a measly 5,182 words – not helped by the fact that I wrote nothing at all on five of the allotted days!

In my defence, I should add that these were carefully chosen and edited words – not the crazy jumble that spills out during NaNo – so for every one I counted there were probably a dozen or more discarded.

As well as recording the number of words written, I made a note of where I’d used them, and this turned out to be a much more useful exercise.

About half of the words produced:
  • 4 new pages for my adult novel
  • half a chapter of my children’s book
  • a flash fiction story
  • 4 short blog posts 

And where did the other half go? Into comments on other people’s blogs and forums.

Conclusion  I’d do twice as much writing if I didn’t spend so much time reading!   

P.S. If you like reading and doing puzzles (and live in the UK or Republic of Ireland) National Book Tokens is currently running this competition to win a year’s supply of books.

5 comments:

SquirrelQueen said...

You wrote far more than I did in the month of November. Just think of all the things we could do if we stopped reading blogs but then what would we do without our blogging friends?

Anonymous said...

Hi Linda, I'm glad you are a blogger. It's fun isn't it? And it is writing of a form anyway. Keep it up.

Linda D said...

Don't think I could give up now, Susan. I'm addicted!

Annecdotist said...

Hi, Linda, I've finally found a way to join you here! I never thought of the comments I'd write on others' blogs as "writing", but why not? It's all words and sentences – and the thought behind it – and I guess we're all addicted.

Linda D said...

Welcome, Anne!