Hello everyone!
As I am writing this, it is Day 3 of NaNoWriMo and… gosh I got to say I am zonked out and ready to sleep! So, this past weekend I decided to do something really bold and intense… I did a 24-hour write-a-thon. I got the idea from Emily, a fellow blogger-writer, and it sounded like a lot of fun! I want to tell you guys a bit about my write-a-thon experience. ***Spoiler alert, I kind of failed hahaha***
So on Saturday November 2, I woke up at 6:30AM to walk my dogs and eat breakfast, and by 8AM I was a bit tired (already!! from waking up early!!) but otherwise very very excited to write.
I started off with a livestream on Youtube, which was something that I’ve never done before. It’s always been terrifying to even tell others about what I am writing (though I think I’m getting better at that) and all of a sudden I decided to take a leap of faith and jump off the deep end and did a livestream. It was kind of fun, but it also felt kind of weird since I am not used to the idea of people watching me write on camera?
Needless to say, I did not get much writing done in the first hour of the stream, just because of the sheer stress of the situation!! I did three 1-hour livestreams throughout the day. To be honest, not too sure whether or not it is my thing but we’ll see? 🙂
Psst in case you guys are curious about the livestreams, they are still out there on the Internet LOL. Here is the link.
At 11:15PM, I was on the 13th hour of writing (and 15th hour of simply being awake) and I was feeling tired and frankly, just very sleepy… so I set my alarm for a 1-hour nap. Except when my alarm rang at 12:30AM, I totally turned it off and continued sleeping. And by the time I really woke up, it was 6AM LOL. (Essentially I slept as much as I would usually sleep lol.)
Soooooooo I decided to make up for the writing the following day on Sunday haha.
How did my writing go overall? By the end of the weekend, I had written 10,785 words between Friday, Saturday and Sunday!! This is pretty dang amazing for just 3 days of NaNo.
But how much of the word count is attributable to the 24-hour write-a-thon? I had written about 4.1K on Saturday, which wasn’t bad, but I had discovered the hard way that my productivity peaks at a certain point after a few hours of writing, and then I get tired and write slower and slower. I’m not too upset at myself for falling asleep because to be honest, if I had stayed awake the entire night, I would not have gotten much writing done, and the quality of the writing would have suffered.
Interestingly, I actually wrote more (4.9K) on Sunday though it wasn’t part of the actual write-a-thon lol.
The lesson of the day? Know thyself! In hindsight I should have known that the 24-hour write-a-thon probably won’t work for me! I work much better in small chunks of a few hours of concentrated writing at a time.
P. S. Yes I’ve written a lot of words this weekend. Part of my intention was just to get a bit ahead of the game, because I know that the weekdays will be super hectic at work. For example I’m foreseeing that Tuesday will be a zero-word day since I am literally at work from 8AM to midnight. “Weekend warrior”-ing is what I swear by when it comes to NaNoWriMo but it doesn’t work for everyone. I’d say it’s absolutely all right to do a steady pace every day instead of trying a stunt like this!
P.P.S. I am not by any means advocating for doing write-a-thons like this! Although we want to be dedicated to our craft, it can be unhealthy and even dangerous to lose sleep in order to write. I was just curious about how it would go, and as you can see, I didn’t even complete the challenge haha. To be honest, even throughout the day I was taking breaks, stretching, walking dogs, eating etc. If you are interested in giving this a try, keep in mind your mental and physical health!
About My NaNo Project, “Fog”
No one knows where the Fog comes from. All they know is that those who enter the Fog never return.
Luna and her twin sister Treya live in a town on the coast of Suni. Luna is the quiet one, while Treya is charismatic, powerful and the pride of the Delphinus Clan. Treya has already decided to be a Sorcerer and join the Queen’s Army, just like their mother and father. But Luna doesn’t know what she wants to be; also, joining the Queen’s Army seems like a lot of work.
On the day of their graduation. Luna rescues a boy from the edge of the Fog. His name is Caio Amadeus Vladimir and he looks nothing like anyone in the country. Caio wants to go into the Fog and map out the lost regions of Suni, and he asks Luna to be his bodyguard. Luna thinks he is delusional.
Until Treya disappears on a misty day. Luna will do anything to bring her back.
A Snippet from “Fog”
The only sound is the clang, clang, clang of chisel on rock, as the Bone Artist carves names into the slabs of stone. Three rows are tagged to the end of a long list. Three of the hundreds of people who will never return. There are more names than rocks to fit them.
The Boneyard is a misnomer. There are no bones in the yard.
Since November is NaNoWriMo month, I am changing things up a bit on this blog: I’ll be posting snapshots of my NaNo progress throughout the weeks. I’m hoping to have 1-2 of these “NaNo Diaries” every week, and on Friday we will have our usual Writers’ Corner posts. In December we’ll go back to the usual Sophie’s Corner blend of reading, writing and discussion posts!
SOPHIE LI 
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