nanowrimo – day 23: Luise is watching me

2290 words today. Now look at this….! 

I just need 2555 more words in order to get the mandatory nanowrimo word count done. I assume Tuesday will be the day.

I had hoped to write more this weekend, but I seem to be empty for the day after around 2000 words – my brain refuses to do significantly more. I did some more analysis in comparison between my first nanowrimo in 2010 and this year’s attempt. In 2010, each of the three 10-day periods had a certain mood and atmosphere.

The first 10 days: enthusiasm, delight, motivation, ahead of schedule.

The second 10 days: It got harder. I kept on schedule, but it was not easy. I keenly watched the word count.

The last 10 days: Endless writing sessions, crawling forward word by word. Checking the word count a hundred times per hour. Feeling exhausted, more so with every word I squeezed out of my pen (or keyboard).

This time, it is definitely better. I feel I have entered phase 2 from above, i.e. it is getting harder, but not unbearable. I am in a positive mood 🙂

To get an idea of what still lies ahead of me, here some benchmarking on word count (approximate counts):

63.000 Jacob’s Room (Virginia Woolf)
220.000 The world according to Garp (John Irving)
170.000 The dice man (Luke Rhinehart)
260.000 Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)
190.000 Ein weites Feld (Günter Grass)
128.000 Der Hundertjährige, der aus dem Fenster stieg und verschwand (Jonas Jonasson, German translation)

I assume after finishing this year’s nanowrimo, I will have one half of the story, content-wise. As I did 50.000 in 2010 and will do 50.000 this November and found further 10.000 from inbetween, this adds up to 220.000 words for the full story. That looks a lot… In order to prevent a potential reader from falling asleep, I might need to cut it in half then…

Interesting process, though.

Ah, you might want to know what the title of this post is about. I have a little companion while writing at home. Let me introduce you to Luise:

Luise is sitting on my sofa and taking care on me (i.e. watching closely that I don’t cheat). She is lovesick because her sweetheart, Rat-Man, is busy somewhere else and never calls… Isn’t that sad? Men are mean, quod erat demonstrandum.