2009 Word Count Graph and Useless Statistics

Here is my word count graph for the month:

The NaNoWriMo site added a gray bar that shows your goal for each day. This year, I didn't skip any days until the very end after I declared myself "done," which is a good feeling.

Some useless statistics:

Average words per day: 2,288.7

Median words per day: 1,944

Minimum: 251

Maximum: 7,642 (on the last day!)

Number of days where I wrote: 28

Total words written:

--> 64,061 according to Word;

--> 64,088 according to NaNoWriMo;

--> 64,019 according to counting the individual words

Number of unique words used: 5,535
Average number of times a word gets used: 11.6
Most used words: The (4,196), To (2,180), And (1,860), She (1,331), Her (1,230)
Most used meaningful words: Kaylee (596), Room (243), Door (223), Going (177), Time (162)
I used 2,653 words only once each

I wrote this year's story in present tense, which was a challenge sometimes. Several times, I had to go back through what I wrote and change it from past tense to reflect that. I'm not sure I got them all, either. I'm also not sure what the rule is about writing something in past tense within the text if you're writing about something now that happened before, and I don't mean in dialogue, either.

As happened last year, I think the story ended too abruptly. Last year's story actually kindof made sense. This year's story, I think there's a different pacing to the last part of the story. The first part is more descriptive and paced. The last part is all crazy-like. This might show what I mean:

Chapter 1: 2,946 words
Chapter 2: 2,218 words
Chapter 3: 3,418 words
Chapter 4: 2,385 words
Chapter 5: 1,656 words
Chapter 6: 773 words
Chapter 7: 1,985 words
Chapter 8: 2,339 words
Chapter 9: 1,959 words
Chapter 10: 2,413 words
Chapter 11: 2,379 words
Chapter 12: 2,317 words
Chapter 13: 2,186 words
Chapter 14: 2,549 words
Chapter 15: 3,823 words
Chapter 16: 3,036 words
Chapter 17: 2,971 words
Chapter 18: 15,068 words!!!
Chapter 19: 7,621 words!

After chapter 17, things changed!

Okay, enough stats for now.

NaNo Day 28

I'm done.

Today was huge. While I was initially going for 10,000 words today, I fell short of that mark somewhat. On the other hand, my story wound down and ended on me faster than I expected. At the end, I do leave quite a bit up to the imagination of the reader, and could probably go back and fill in some of those gaps, but the story is basically whole and complete now. I'm reasonably happy with it, though give me a few months and I'll come back and read through it and let you know what I really feel about it. (Maybe.)

November 28:
Words today: 7,642
Words total: 64,061

Note that the official NaNoWriMo site counts my words as 64,083, a discrepancy of only 22 words.

NaNo Day 27

I honestly don't remember two days ago. It was apparently a decent writing day.

Yesterday, while Thanksgiving stuff was cooking, I reread much of what I have already written, doing some continuity checking of my story. Much of it was good. I fixed a couple oversights and fixed one place where I accidentally mistook one character for another and used the wrong name for a while. Everything seems to be back together now, and more cohesive. I realize this is all in the category of "editing" and is therefore bad during NaNo, but I needed to do it to move forward.

Today after returning from a painting excursion, I put all the pieces together and mapped out not only where everything is, but where it is going and how it reaches its eventual conclusion. The good news is that everything seems to fit well with my last revised outline. The bad news is that it looks like it will take another thirteen sections (many of them may be short) to get there! At the start of NaNo, I was writing one section a day or so. Section 18 ended up being five-and-a-half times longer than a normal section at 22 pages in length. That's about 23 sections written. To have another 13 or MORE to go is seriously daunting!

What all this review and planning means is very few new words in the last couple days, but really, I think it is worth it.

November 25:
Words today: 2,394
Words total: 55,449

November 26:
Words today: 463
Words total: 55,912

November 27:
Words today: 507
Words total: 56,419

NaNo Day 24

Not a good day for writing, though the reason is that I am at a fairly critical point in the story. I need to decide where things go from here, and I have some loose ends to tie up. I'm essentially taking the night off, I guess. I hope to pick the story up again tomorrow and push on. I'm going to have to if I have any hope of making my revised goal!

November 24:
Words today: 368
Words total: 53,055

NaNo Day 23

I have revamped my goal. I am now shooting for a story with at least 70,000 words, and preferably one with 75,000 words. 75,000 words means a pace of at least 2,500 words per day. It also means that with the pace I've gone so far, I'm actually behind. After today's writing, I'm behind by 4,813 words, though to be fair, I'm changing the finish line after having written for three weeks aiming at a closer finish line. Today, I only made it 35 words past that minimum, so the gap isn't closing by much.

November 23:
Words today: 2,535
Words total: 52,687

NaNo Day 22

I crossed the line! I didn't think I was going to make it today, but I did! I'm going to celebrate by doing something that isn't writing and looks a lot more like drinking a glass of wine and watching Dexter. :)

I'm setting a dangerous precedent, though, having crossed the 50,000 word mark on November 22 last year as well. This story is far from over, though, so its word count is likely to continue to grow until the end of the month. Last year, I hit 50,000 and boom, the story ended.

November 22:
Words today: 4,503
Words total: 50,152

NaNo Day 21

As expected, yesterday wasn't a good day for writing. I spent maybe thirty minutes frantically tapping keys while balancing my laptop in my lap. Today wasn't all that good, either, though better than yesterday. Both days were under par for NaNo (1,667 words per day). I spent much of today finishing the migration of http://www.orcsports.com/ to its new home, and trying to reverse the damage done by a hacker to another web site I am responsible for. Each of those cost me several hours today.

Tomorrow is the 22nd of the month, which is the day I crossed 50,000 last year so I am feeling some pressure for a repeat performance. With 4,351 words to go to reach that mark, though, I'm not sure I will have enough contiguous time to devote to writing to make it, but I will try.

November 20:
Words today: 610
Words total: 44,451

November 21:
Words today: 1,198
Words total: 45,649

NaNo Day 19

Very quickly, as it's getting late: Today was a good day, even though I didn't start until late at night. Work came first, then the long commute home, then dinner and THEN I could start writing. The story is picking up and even though I haven't had one of those occasions where I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with the story as it unfolds, I was doing pretty good. I can feel the pace of the writing accelerating, and it's a good feeling. I almost don't want to put it down, but I have to get to bed so I can get up for work tomorrow.

Tomorrow's going to be a long day and I expect I may not even be able to get around to writing unless I sneak some time in at lunch or something. We'll see.

November 19:
Words today: 2,058
Words total: 43,841

NaNo Day 18

I wrote a little while waiting for my son to get done at his appointment. I also wrote when I got home. It was a productive day. I'm to the point where the action of the story can start. Yes, on page 73, the action can START. No, the book isn't going to be some massive huge novel when I'm done. It's just the way this story ended up being structured. It isn't as though nothing has happened up to this point. Honest!

November 18:
Words today: 2,112
Words total: 41,783

NaNo day 17

I haven't tracked my progress in a few days, not because I haven't been writing, but because I've been squeezing it in between other activites, and I always deemed posting here to be a lower priority. I could always catch up, right? Well, here it is a few days later and I am catching up, but I know I lost touch with the feelings I had writing on each day. I know one day I was frustrated, but don't remember why. I know another day I spent more time playing than I should have and didn't bring up the word count. I also know that yesterday I hit exactly 1,667 words, which I thought was amusing (since that's the pace you need to keep every day for NaNoWriMo). Looking once again at my word count, I am very tempted to try to break 40,000 today, but it is getting late and I have a busy day tomorrow. Here's the summary.

November 14:
Words today: 882
Words total: 33,253

November 15:
Words today: 1,359
Words total: 34,612

November 16:
Words today: 1,667
Words total: 36,279

November 17:
Words today: 3,392
Words total: 39,671

NaNo 2009 on Friday the 13th

I woke up late this morning, had breakfast with my girlfriend and my son and then went shopping for paint and supplies. Next, my son and I drove to the house (I think we left Longmont at noon) and proceeded to mask and paint the main bedroom. With a break for a long trip to the pharmacy and another for dinner, we got done with the first coat and cleaned up at about 11 PM, at which time I started writing. I tried the Write or Die site, which I may or may not use again later. I'm not sure it is effective in motivating me personally. Anyway, that explains my word count today.

We're going to be painting again tomorrow, and heading back to Longmont, so I expect my word count for Saturday to be anemic, too.

November 13:
Words today: 1,116 in about 30 minutes
Words total: 32,371

NaNo Day 12

Not a good day for writing. Good day for working around the house. Oh, and cooking. I did some of that today. And I played Everquest with my girlfriend for a while. Now we're going to watch Dexter (Season 2 Disc 4). Tomorrow and Saturday don't look promising for writing, either, unless I do it very late or very early.

November 12:
Words today: 251 (BOOOOOO!)
Words total: 31,255

NaNo Day 11

I started the day surprised to be facing yet another block, but I was able to work through that one as well. I got the words flowing again a little later in the afternoon and moved the story ahead one chapter.

My intent when I started the month was to work on one chapter per day, getting maybe 2,500 words in that chapter. I think I can sustain that pace. I'm at 2,818 words per day right now. I wrote at around 2,350 words per day during last year's NaNoWriMo. After several days, I realized I fell away from the approach not in word count, but in the idea of focusing on one chapter per day. I'm leaning back towards that again now, and it's going pretty well. For now.

November 11:

Words today: 3,003
Words total: 31,004

NaNo Day 10

A much better day. I worked through the block I was having, and got to the point where the next few chapters are laid out and ready to be written. It was amusing trying to catch one of my writing buddies. She had quite a few more words than I did, so I wrote until I caught up. Then I refreshed the page and saw that she wrote more, so I wrote more and caught up. This repeated at least four times until finally I had more words than she did (though not by much). Content with my progress (plus the fact that my girlfriend got home from class), I stopped for the day. I checked back a little while later and saw that she passed me again by just over 1,000 words! Yay for motivation! Tomorrow should be good!

November 10:
Words today: 3,259
Words total: 28,001

NaNo Day 9

More distractions! Today was a horrible day for writing. I don't like the point I am at in the story and am feeling hopelessly UNcreative today. I need to break through this problem. Maybe a change of venue would help. My word count is low. I know I took at least a couple hundred words back out as I continue to sin against NaNo and edit what I have. It's a bad habit I must break ASAP!

November 9:
Words today: 381 (OMG that's horrible!)
Words total: 24,742

NaNo Day 8

Today was full of distractions. I was only able to spend about an hour writing after everything else quieted down. The result: not much progress. I'm actually pretty nervous about the state of my story at the moment. Some things have progressed faster than I wanted them to, and I am not sure there is enough of a story left to tell from this point forward. I will find out soon enough if I am right. After all, NaNoWriMo is only a month long, right?

November 8:
Words today: 1,823
Words total: 24,361

My Reading 2009 #1

I decided to add what I read to this site, just to keep literary stuff in one place. To that end, here are some books I recently finished:

(Some time in the summer): Dune. This was fantastic and well-written. The movies (both versions) and the miniseries don't do it justice. For a sci-fi book, the world-building was amazing and consistent and the characters well-developed.

(Beginning of September): "Girls of Riyadh" by Rajaa Alsanea. Basically, it was Saudi Arabia gossip, though it did give some insight into their culture (from one person's perspective, anyway).

9/16/2009: "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov. It was alright, I guess. I didn't believe a senior investigator would get so flustered by one naked spacer, though. The story seemed pretty innocent and naive, like comparing TNG to DS9. *ahem* Those are Star Trek references. Sorry.

10/5/2009: "Articles of War" by Nick Arvin. Elegant prose; colorful descriptions of a wide variety of situations; and a well-defined main character I couldn't care less about.

10/9/2009: "The Rescue" by Nicholas Sparks (same guy who wrote The Notebook, on which the movie was based). Cute story, but it alternated between feeling like a soap opera and feeling like I'm reading the second or third draft of someone's NaNoWriMo novel, where they're trying like crazy to make their word count.

(The end of October): "Dirty Play" by Sandra Brown. The characters in this book confused me at first, and the author played a maddening game of "I'll tell you later," but in the end, once I got with the tempo, it was a fun little ride.

That's all for now, though I've currently got three books underway. I suspect that November is not a good month for reading, however.

NaNo Day Seven

I'm not going to midnight tonight, unlike several other nights this week. I'm spending some time with my girlfriend instead. I know, "novel concept." Ha ha. Okay, bad pun. Here's today's words:

November 7:
Words today: 5,080
Words total: 22,538

Catching Up

I missed doing this for the past couple days. I must've been distracted by something!

November 5:
Words today: 2,615
Words total: 15,628

November 6:
Words today: 1,830
Words total: 17,458

Scared Myself

I scared myself this morning. I forgot that the very last part I wrote last night was on an earlier chapter. I opened my Word document this morning and Ctrl-Ended to the bottom. Reading through what was written there, my heart leapt into my throat. My most recently added words were gone!

No, not gone. Just not at that part of the story. Everything's alright again! /whew

NaNo 2009 Day Four

Today was rough. I didn't like the way two of my characters were introduced to each other, or the interaction between them after that, so I decided to sin against NaNoWriMo and rewrite part of it. I basically had to address a 2,500 word section of prose and change it around enough so that the introduction of the two characters made sense. That meant that all the interaction between them after that had to be changed as well, though the changes weren't as indepth as I thought they were going to be. At the end, I had exactly 30 more words than before, and the passage made far more sense then.

After that, I was able to add some new content to the story, and embellish a few places that were lacking. All in all, I was still shy of my goal for today, which was 13,333 (par for day 8 of NaNo), but I'm happy with where I am.

November 4:
Words today: 2,381 (net, though there were far more in the reworking effort)
Words total: 13,013

NaNo 2009 Day Three

Today was taken up with work followed by the drive to Longmont for some birthday festivities for my girlfriend's son, who turned 13 today. We had dinner out, dessert at another place, and when we got home we watched a movie together. At around 11:10, I was able to start writing for the day.

After I got done writing and posting my word count on the NaNoWriMo site, I looked at twitter, which brought me to a couple NaNo participant's blogs. They're doing it, so I'm going to do it. In fact, I'll go back and do it for the past couple days all at once:

November 1:
Words today: 5,499
Words total: 5,499

November 2:
Words today: 4,007
Words total: 9,506

November 3:
Words today: 1,126
Words total: 10,632

While my word count is trending down, my morale is good. I'm actually quite pleased about my 1,126 words in under an hour today, especially considering the fact that I GOT RID OF THE HATED PARAGRAPH! The replacement paragraph is a little shorter, but still has a reference to nipples. At least I like this one.

Bad Line

I am totally obsessing over a paragraph I wrote last night. I hate it. I want to take it out, but I want something to put in its place and I can't think of anything to use. No, I'm not going to share the paragraph I hate. I hate it that much. Hopefully something will come to me soon.

NaNoWriMo 2009 begins

I finally started working on the story yesterday. It's the same story I blogged about here in June. I'm actually surprised I was able to sit on it for that long. Hopefully that gave me enough time to come up with good ideas for the plot. We'll see.

Yesterday morning, I woke up just after 7, poured a bowl of cereal and made some tea. I checked email briefly, and started writing. It took me at least an hour, maybe 90 minutes, before I had 70 or so words written because I was coming up with names for my main character and supporting characters, doing a little last-minute research, and reviewing my outline. After that, I went headlong into chapter one. I posted my word count each time it rose significantly, so 70-ish, 140-ish, 380, 800, and so on. I finished the first two chapters of my outline and started on chapter three. My final word count for day one, posted at 11:57 PM (thank you for the extra hour, time change) was 5,499 words.

I did take a couple breaks during the day to grab food, run to the store and play Everquest with Ray - we did the Halloween-themed quests. We also got a visit from the landlord to fix a couple things around the house. I didn't do a lot of the things on my to-do list, like balance my checkbook, clean up my office or finish laundry. I didn't realize until Ray pointed it out that my pajama bottoms were hanging off the TV in my office while the landlord was here! (D'oh!) I put them there when I changed clothes in my office. I was trying to be nice and not wake Ray.

This morning, I woke up with a couple ideas for the story, so rather than open the story document and leave late for work, I emailed them to myself. I checked the NaNoWriMo site and found that since my last update, one of my writing buddies has about a thousand more words than I do. She had about a hundred fewer yesterday. I will have to remedy that! (Yes, I'm competitive that way sometimes.) I'm not sure when I will be able to write today, as I have to work, but I'm sure I will fit it in. I'll be at my old house tonight, which might help since there are fewer distractions there, but might be a hindrance because there is still work to be done there. I must find a balance.

Wee!