Nanowrimo Update - 11/16/2010

Nanowrimo (the National Novel Writing Month) has finished its second week.  Writers as of today (November 16) should have written 26,667 words toward their 50,000 word novels.  The chart at the left depicts my progress to date.  I have not yet started writing today.  I hope to complete between 1,500 and 2,000 words, which will put me in a position to complete the 50,000 word goal before the end of the month.

While this is good as far as the challenge is concerned, I was really hoping to be at the 40,000 word (or higher) mark at this point, so I am disappointed in my progress.

Also true is that I'm counting 11,997 words of character notes, background material, and scene descriptions in the total, so my finished word count is much closer to 20,000 (which means I'm actually behind the 26,667 word point I should be at by now.  That's also disappointing.

Fortunately, however, I am taking all of next week off.  While I am doing this in part to relax, spend time with family, and do some holiday shopping, I'm also doing it to start kicking out the word count.  I'm hoping that at the end of next week I'll be well above 50,000 words of "finished product" and moving closer to my 80,000 word goal.  Time will tell, however.

I was pleased to learn last week that the makers of one of my favorite writing tools, Scrivener, have announced the upcoming release of a Windows version of the software.  I own the Mac version, and it was in fact the reason I looked for a Mac when I purchased my last laptop.  Normally, I have no use for the Macintosh operating system.  (It's not that I have any particular problem with the Mac, it's more that I switched to Windows in 1998 and I haven't had a compelling reason since then to switch back - Scrivener included.)

I've been using the free public beta of Scrivener for Windows since I found out about it.  For Nanowrimo 2010 I had been using the open source Storybook software which is fairly similar and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The Scrivener beta has so far been very reliable and hasn't crashed, though it has exhibited a couple of bugs that I've reported to the development team.  I expect to complete this novel entirely in Scrivener now and to acquire the final released version in 2011 when it comes out.  If you don't have a favorite writing environment you might want to check it out, especially since it's free at the moment.

Well, I'd better get to cranking out today's words…