Writing A Book In A Week

Short story: I was supposed to go on holiday for a week in November, but it’s been cancelled. So I’m sitting here, a week off work with nothing to do, and everyone’s doing NaNoWriMo. So I figured I’ll try to catch up.

My Goal: I’m going to write a novel in a week.  Since NaNo is 50.000 words, that’s what I’m going for. (If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, go check it out here.) I’ve never done it officially, but this week I’ll try to join in my own special way.

Methodology: I’m starting on  Monday (November 12), ending on Sunday (November 18). I need to write an average of 7148 words a day, to make it. I’m not doing much else this week, so I’m going to treat it as a day job.

What am I writing: I always have, at all times, multiple future projects lined up. I’m not a plotter anyway, so any of those could work, but I do tend to stop and do a bit of research here and there as I’m going. So I’ve chosen a project that I think is going to be easy to work a lot on, quickly. I don’t want to be caught up in having to solve plot issues or work out whats happening (even if it’s just a 1st draft).

I’m writing a thriller-horror thing, set in a run down hotel (cue all The Shining references). There’s going to be only on major character, a man who’s checking in to the hotel, and a few side characters, the people who live and work there. I have a bit more planned than that, but I don’t want to give too much away, it’s probably going to chance a lot anyway. Currently, I have 74 words in the outline for this project. Yes, this is how I work.

Expectations: I’ll be honest and objective about this: I don’t think I’ll be successful. I’ll be happy if I even reach half the word count at 25k, but I’ll try my best. My biggest challenge is trying to not be too distracted and actually putting the work down, even if I’ve sat down to write.  But we’ll see.

Day-to-day Updates: I’ll be adding notes, thoughts, and word counts per day below. This is an exciting project both because I might have a book at the end, but it’s also a challenge for myself to see if it’s a sustainable work method. I’m curious to see how it will go.

Monday (12th):

Tuesday (13th):

Wednesday (14th):

Thursday (15th):

Friday (16th):

Saturday (17th):

Sunday (18th):