One thing I'll miss, now that Phase One is complete, is the rapid word count gains I saw last week. I never thought I could sustain a burst like that, but I owe it all to my detailed synopsis. One major difference between plotting and pantsing (at least for me) is the former allows me to really crank out words as I go from bullet point to bullet point.
Exhibit A: Here is a post from the NaNo forum containing the Austin Area stats as of Sunday:
Hey everybody! We have some numbers for the first week -ish. These numbers were accurate as of Sunday morning around 8 am.
We have 1,497 people homed in Austin and 827 have entered word count. Our total regional word count is 6,016,832. The average word count of folks who are writing is 7,561. With yesterday's end of day goal at 11,669, there were 191 on target - but actually, there are more because the numbers are from the beginning of day and the target was end-of-day. Anyhoo, we have two winners already!
Here's a list of the top dozen wordiest Austin authors so far:
- Caeraerie : 101,307
- MerryTwoTwo : 72,852
- dalartha : 38,109
- rianlrt : 35,153
- theresajmc : 33,547
- hillsc : 31,717
- Peska : 28,084
- MTeson : 27,815
- marysipe : 27,284
- Tathry : 25,742
- OrangeTangoDoble : 25,377
- Rabidtreeweasel : 25,059
Check me out there in sixth place. Of course, that's as good as it's going to get. I'm essentially dropping out of NaNo for now (since the spirit of NaNo is to simply crank, crank, crank, and that phase is behind me now).
It will be sad watching everyone catch up and eventually soar past me. But that's okay. I was never in it for the win this year. It was simply an excuse to get a 33k word burst in one week and prepare me for the slow and difficult part.
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