My Camp NaNoWriMo word count graph will lie to you. It says things like, “Wow, you wrote almost 40k in the first day!”
Nope. I started with about 37k the first day. And I’m transcribing dictation I did a week ago. Hopefully I will catch up soon and be dictating/transcribing in real time. But the graph is there to mark my progress, which has as much to do with dictating as it does with transcribing.
I’m 100% okay with the slightly skewed statistics I have, because this month of April is all about making progress! It’s all about moving forward and doing the work. For this month, I’m not starting at the beginning of a story, because I already started.
But we don’t have to start at the beginning. This goes for tracking progress AND starting your story.
Even if you’re starting at zero words, who says you have to start at the beginning of the story? Beginning is a difficult task. Sometimes you want to jump to the action (which, to be honest, is probably where you story starts anyway). This post is just to say that when you’re starting out, whether it’s at the beginning of your story, before the story starts, or jumping ahead to where inspiration strikes… it’s all OK.
As long as you get to work and work hard!
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Rebecca McLaughlin 