You learn a lot about your writing capabilities when you push your limits. After 11 days of participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge, I have learned that I am capable of producing at least 1700 words of fiction per day. It’s not easy and it takes several hours, but I can do it.

I’ve also learned that it requires a road map to get there. The dry-erase board on the wall of our game room now houses the detailed outline for each chapter as I start to write it. My beloved co-author and I are constantly in discussions about what comes next.

The hardest task during NaNo continues to be keeping up with the story. It takes approximately three days to complete each chapter, and often I start the next chapter on the same day I finished the previous one. The chapters switch back and forth between the three point-of-view characters, so I am constantly having to shift gears during the writing to get back inside a different character’s head. At times, I feel like I am racing through the book, trying to catch my breath.

Am I glad that I decided to attempt the NaNo challenge? At the moment, I definitely am. We’ll see how things are by the end of the month.

Anyway, I can’t spend too much time on this blog post today — I still have 1700 words of fiction to write!

I’ll give you another update next Friday.

-Susan 11/12/2021

p.s. Technically, you only have to write 1667 words per day to finish 50,000 words in 30 days and complete the NaNo challenge, but I prefer to round it up to 1700. On most days of the challenge so far, I have completed between 1800 and 2000 words, because I don’t like to halt abruptly in the middle of a scene.