NaNoWriMo Nov 2023 Update — Day 16
26,461 Words
Some days, I write to or beyond my target of 1,667 words a day. Somedays I don’t write but 300 or 400 words, but so far, I’ve written every single day of this month. The goal at the end of November is to have 50,000 words written. I keep track of the number of words in each chapter so I can see which ones might need some more work. I’d like to keep them relatively close in word counts. The idea is to get the story told. My story.
I began with ten chapters. Now, I have 14 of them. It was a case of, “Oh, I forgot to talk about that.” Whatever that being had a good bit to talk about. This is a teaching memoir. It’s my life as a psychic and how I got here. I already wrote something similar, which may also be a book. I’ll have to see when I’m finished with both of them.
It’s easy enough to update my word counts. This time around with NaNoWriMo I am using Atticus to write the book. Whenever I update my wordcounts to make sure I am on track I move through the chapters in Atticus, get a count, enter that number into my spreadsheet. At the end I am able to compare what Atticus says the whole book has to what I’ve got on the spreadsheet. It’s just easier and takes hardly any time at all to update once a day.
On today’s work, I’m still 211 words in the hole, but in total, I wrote 3,911 words today. That’s enough. Maybe, later on, if I am in the mood, I might write more and just update my count again at NaNoWriMo.
Also, I have updated my word count once a day, which for me is pretty good. In a lot of the previous NaNoWriMo’s I’ve participated in, I would end up missing some of the update days. Anyway, I’m on a streak right now.
Something I’ve noticed when I look at the publication dates of books for prolific writers I am investigating at Amazon is their first books were written a long time ago, with a lot of time between the first and second books. Then, it gets easier for them, or they’ve learned enough, or they’ve hit their stride and eventually begin churning out books to the tune of five a year.
Some of those writers write simultaneously on different books, which I feel would be an awesome thing to do. One of the authors I have read recently is Steve Higgs. I love his books. He always has his two dachshunds in them. They are whodunits with his folks, girlfriend, and chums, all of them fighting bad guys and monsters and solving mysteries as private eyes. Also, there is the fun of paranormal stuff going on. I stumbled upon him as a writer. In Kindle Unlimited, if you have that, many of his books are available to borrow. I’ve read the Blue Moon Investigations, the Patricia Fisher Mysteries, some of the Felicity Philips series, and the Albert Smith series. What is fun is you can see each character emerge in the Blue Moon Investigations and then eventually go off on their own.
The screen print above utilizes a program called KDSPY.com with Steve Higgs’ books. KDSPY costs $69. I’ve had it for a couple of years. What you do is install it as a Chrome extension. Then, in Chrome, you open an incognito window. You also can’t be signed into Amazon. For some reason, Amazon hooks up with your favorite stuff and clouds the results you get with KDSPY. I went to Steve’s author page at Amazon and hit the KDSPY button on my browser. Voila. Lots to look at. I asked for a browse of 40 items. He’s got more than the 40, but that’s as far as I went. From the screen print, the results are ordered by estimated monthly revenue. I am on the Kindle tab. There are three other tabs to look at: audiobook, hardcover and paperback. The total monthly revenue is $89,379 for all his books no matter if they are e-pubs or printed on paper. Can you even imagine making that much every month? Incredible.
I originally got KDSPY to find the best non-fiction niches to write Kindle books for Kindle Direct Publishing KDP at Amazon. It is still useful, but not necessarily for what I am doing now. Where it will come into play with this book is when I go to publish and choose my niche for publication.
One of the benefits of participating in NaNoWriMo is that there are all sorts of wonderful offers. Yesterday, I spent $18 for close to 25 books about writing. I have downloaded them as PDFs and can read them at my leisure. The offer is by a group called HumbleBundle.com. They are a charitable organization, and 90¢ of what I spent is being sent to NaNoWriMo.org. There were also some discounts on writing software, which I’ve already got, and a 6-month subscription to a Writing Mastery Academy, which looks really interesting. I put the link below because I think you’d probably be able to access it even if you are not participating in NaNoWriMo this year. They also have two other offers. For $1, you can get seven things. For $10, you can get 16 things, and for $18, you get 32 things.
I think it would be good to check out Humble Bumble. They’ve also got games which I’m not interested in, but some of you reading might be.
Thanks for reading.
The Links: NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month (Free) Steve Higgs — Author’s Page at Amazon KDSPY.com HumbleBumble.com — NaNoWriMo Bundle Link