NaNoWriMo Week 1 Stat-porn

So, I’ve jumped in at the deep end and ploughed on into NaNoWriMo. I’m loving every minute of it, and, a week in, I’m going to update everyone by posting these current statistics for your viewing pleasure. I have also done a few lovely charts. This will be a weekly update for the rest of the month; all other blog post ideas are on hold.

As of November 7^th, I have written 11,862 words.

Total Word Count has improved quite steadily, except on the 5^th, where I was busy with work commitments during the evening and only managed a paltry 532 words that day. This affected my totals and I had some catching up to do, which I proudly say I have done and I’m on scehdule at my current rate to finish on Nov 30^th.

Words Written Per Day – again, this was pretty good going, apart from the 5^th. My most productive day so far was the 7^th, where I managed 2,431 words. The 2nd was also very good with 2,408 words penned that day.

 

Words Per Hour – I’ve also been measuring this on my spreadsheet using a trusty stopwatch. It’s seemed to levelled off quite nicely, but I’m rarely writing in actual hour blocks; I#m tending to do 15-40 minute blocks of pure writing and then calculating a cumulative total for the day at the end.

 Percent Complete : 24%– a quarter of the way there, and it doesn’t feel like it yet!

 

 

 

 

I’m also now going to post a little extract from what I’ve gotten down so far. Have a read and tell me what you think:

The Last of the Steamers by Richard Holliday – Draft 1 Extract 1

    For the next two hours, Toby went through the arrowheads, picking each one up and giving it a quick clean with a paintbrush. After that, he made a notation of the shape and size of the arrowhead before tossing it lazily into a pile on the other side of his desk. Arrowheads were a pretty common find, what with a number of medieval battles between Lords of the Land a few hundred years ago. Gunpowder in those days was expensive, so the longbow remained the premiere choice of ranged infantry for a long while. Arrowheads, made of iron and sometimes stone, were preserved in the soft ground whereas the wooden shafts and feathered ends did not, and they were increasingly dug up when a metropolitan borough wanted to install some new infrastructure. The current box of arrowheads was a six month collection taken from the construction of the South London underground railway project, which was connecting the towns of Sutton and Cheam with the fantastic burrow of warrens and tunnels, all lined with perfectly cemented brick, that formed the London Metropolitan Subterranean Railway system, its branch lines snaring and slithering like the countless tentacles of a giant, steel and masonry octopus.
    Lunch for Toby fell at around one, and by then the weather outside had deteriorated from a cloudy, but bright day into a miserable overcast depression. The quaint, petit cafe that he had arranged to meet his friend at was a short walk along a few side streets, alleyways and passages, and it only took five or six minutes to make the journey. The door to the cafe, with it's sweet floral curtains and peeling brass and oak door and handle, beckoned. Above the door, the sign, was aged and messy - the rose coloured lettering faded on a peeling white background, with a few crudely painted flowers around it. The door creaked as Toby pushed it gently open, and he stepped inside.
    The maroon carpet was patchy, with the pile flattened from years of heavy footsteps treading on it. The wallpaper was old and faded, and the wood effect siding that extended halfway up the walls where it met the wallpaper with a flakily-varnished dado rail was certainly showing it's age, the varnish and stain patchy and holes appearing every so often along it. The interior of the cafe was dark, the windows, themselves a little grimy, were full of placards with menus and other nick-nacks, notices and assorted junk and flyers tacked onto boards
which leaned lazily against the glass. A few ancient electric bulb fittings swayed gently in the breeze of the door being opened. The tables were mostly empty, and in the corner stood a small serving area, behind which a gruff, old, weathered man in chef's clothing stood, coughing lightly as he scrubbed an stainless steel pan clean of grease and old, dried on sauce. However, in one corner, there was an occupied table. A young man, hair of dirty blonde swishing downwards, in a long woollen coat sat there, gently stirring a cup of hot chocolate and palming through an old, dog-eared newspaper, his back towards Toby and the front of the eatery. Toby, with trepidation, approached, every footstep clumping on the carpeted floor.