National Novel Writing Month kicks off today

My last several posts have all been leading to this day, when the 2014 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) officially kicks off.  For the next 30 days, approximately 500,000 participants from around the globe will be striving to accomplish the same thing: To write 50,000 words of a book before the stroke of midnight on November 30th.  That’s 1,666.6 words each day. We’ll be cheering each other on in local “Write-ins” around the country and world; we will be helping and commiserating online through the NaNoWriMo website and its forums; and we will be updating our daily word counts through their website as we each try to complete this amazing accomplishment.

For each “book” that you submit to NaNoWriMo (although it’s not really a book yet, since you haven’t written it — it’s a book idea), NaNoWriMo provides you with a “Stat” page on its website. Right now, before I’ve written a word, it looks like this:

As you update your daily word counts, the table on the left will recalculate your averages while the line and bar graphs on the right will (I’m assuming) show you where you (and perhaps your local community) are compared with other NaNoWriMo participants.

Okay, it’s time to start writing. Each day I will post my own personal table stats as they are updated, so right now it looks like this:

Tomorrow I’ll update with new stats, along with my daily “Mentor” postings for other WriMos.