The one where I re-discovered Harry Potter Word Crawls and Wrote 3,669 words today

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Writer’s note: If this post seems familiar, it was originally written and published on the morning of DATE on Substack. I wrote in real time during NaNoWriMo 2022. I have since changed platforms for me email newsletter. (If that still interests you, you can sign-up for “Postcards” here.) However, in making future plans for my online writing spaces, I have decided to house my NaNoWriMo 2022 story here on Mrs. Writer. Very little changes, if any, have been made. Enjoy!

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Greeting ogres! Happy Friday evening =D

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) Version:

I wrote 3,669 words in the second half of the day to help me catch on NaNoWriMo! For a total of 7,534 words so far. *virtual confetti*

Goal for tomorrow: To write at least 3,334 words

. . .

And now for the readers who want the story…The long version 🙂

Yesterday (Day 3)

Yesterday before work looked a lot like Alphonse’s visiting hours and distractions.

After work. I was so tired from tiny human emotions that I vegged for the rest of the evening. Ant and I had dinner with the next episode of Malcolm in the Middle. And then I stayed up entirely too late finishing episode 20 of Critical Role Campaign 3 and starting episode 21.

A grand total of 243 words were written.

Cue spiraling thoughts: If I don’t write any tonight, I won’t finish. I invited all the people along on this journey and of course it would die after Day 2. How will ever catch up?

*deep breaths*

Inhaling rest and Story (just in a different form) and exhaling, “It’s okay. I can come back tomorrow.”

Today (Day 4)

This morning Ant surprised me with a trip to the Zoo! He has Fridays off and I happened to have today off as well, so he told me (last night) we needed to leave and then we showed up at the Zoo.

We love our home zoo. It’s small, so we can wander back and forth across it, seeing who we want to see and usually backtracking to see some animal more than once. And always hoofing back to the White-handed Gibbons when they’re talking. (Seriously, it’s the best.)

We had lunch in the car on our way home and then I dinked around on the internet for a couple hours.

And then, decided it was time to write.

Every year NaNoWriMo hosts what they call Double-Up Donation Weekend. They share their monetary goal, if Wrimos donate at a certain level they get the doubled amount’s prizes. There’s a raffle to win hourly prizes, virtual pep talks. It’s a fun day. Wrimos who don’t donate monetarily are still eligible to win raffle prizes, so I filled out that form.

That happens to be this weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

It’s also Double-up Word Count. NaNoWriMo has set a community total of 130,000,000 words.

I take Double-up Word Count to mean that I would write 3,334 words (1,667 x 2) Friday and again on Saturday and again on Saturday. Writing a total of 10,002 words by the end of Sunday night.

Remember, now, I’m already behind because I wrote less than 300 words yesterday.

So I sit down and do all the mathy things to figure out what I need to write to catch up. (Which is really a terrible mindset for NaNo across the board, but *shrug* sometimes you gotta do it.)

My story’s Word Doc was starting total for the day: 3,865

Adding the double-up word count of 3,334 = 7,199 total words in Word Doc

AND, if I felt so inclined to catch up, add 1,424 words to that. Equalling a grand Word Doc total of 8,623.

I did not cross the 8,000-word finish line tonight. But, I did indeed cross the 7,000-word finish line.

7,534 to be exact.

That’s Leah Story’s overall total.

I sat down at 3:10pm and finished writing just before 9pm tonight. I wrote 3,669 words tonight.

There was, of course dinner with Ant in the middle of that. Some internet dinking around. I put my phone in the bedroom to focus better.

I rediscovered the Harry Potter Word Crawls and that is the true secret to tonight’s win.

A word crawl is a fun writing challenge that takes you through a story with different timed and/or word count goals. A Wrimo participant created word crawls for each Harry Potter book. I discovered them in 2015, the first year I won NaNo, and they definitely helped back then too.

Here’s what the first one looks like:

And I wonder if this is partially why I subconsciously desire to read Harry Potter every time around this year.

Which I’m actually re-reading right now, so it’s making the themed word crawl even more fun 🙂

And that’s the tale for today. *confetti*

Tomorrow:

It’s a another relaxed day here. I have random plans tomorrow evening in town, but overall it’ll be a full day of writing, alternating with laundry and reading, walking around and stretching.

Current Stats:

Total Words I wrote today: 3,669

Running Total: 7,534/50,000

Tomorrow’s goal: minimum of 3,334 words

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Goodnight humans! See you tomorrow =D

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This is the fourth post in a series about NaNoWriMo 2022. See the first post here.

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Writing Process Notes:

11/4/22 // Written at 9pm at night, at my writing desk, while listening to the Taylor Swift Playlist I created awhile ago in the order of the music she’s releasing now. Word count: 781

1/15/23 // 8:25pm-8:34pm. Writing desk. Listening to Hamilton soundtrack. // Copying/pasting from OG post. Scheduling post.

1/16/23 // 11:20am-11:47am. Writing Desk. Hobbit Hole noises/Ant’s anime. // Adding photos, tags, categories, and scheduling it.