NaNoWriMo 2015, week 1 thoughts

It's been a week since I started my first National Novel Writing Month, and it's been an interesting experience so far.

First, I want to give props to a trio of inspiring fellow authors: Jamie Davis (the Podmedic), Sam Bradley (@SamBradley11), and B A Wilson (@BAWilsonWrites). Each of them has given a unique insight and inspiration to my efforts, and they deserve credit for reaching out to help a stranger reach his goals.

Second, I'd like to pass on a couple of things I've already learned, based on my experience and the advice of those authors above. Write! Write first. Write a lot. Write without too much concern for the polish, the flow, the "sound" of what you're writing. It can be edited later; in fact, you will almost certainly need to edit it later. It will be really rough. It may even suck. As Jamie told me: "let it suck." For those readers who, like me have a desire to constantly polish and fix things, please hear me echo his advice: don't. Seriously, let it suck, and write a lot of stuff that sucks. Michelangelo touched on this idea, noting "every block of stone has a statue inside it"; write a big block of stone, and only later, go back in and chisel out the story hidden inside. Said another way, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, "it seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove." I believe that I will find it easier to remove and polish a lot of sucking writing, and turn it into a finely crafted story, than to try to fix small pieces.

On to the stats:
Average daily words: 2,572.
Largest single day: 01 NOV, with 5,023 words
Total words: 18,010.
Words remaining: 31,990
Estimated finishing date: 20 NOV.

I am aiming to hit at least one more day (probably Monday) of 5k words.

To my fellow NaNoWriMo writers, keep up the good work, and even if you're not as far along as you'd like, you're still farther along than you were!