Last year I did not participate in any word wars on NaNo because… I don’t really know. Same this year – I just didn’t want to.
Then I realized that one of the merit badge stickers I’m trying to collect involved a word war, so I knew I’d have at least one this year. After a few hours of typing, I grumbled something I could not understand and headed over to the word war forums to try to figure out how to play. After leaving the page and coming back numerous times, I finally participated in one… and got 810 words in 15 minutes! It was a record for me. Seeing how fun the word wars could be and how much more productive I was in 15 minute “sprints”, I wrote that way almost the rest of the day. 11 word wars, each at 15 minutes. By the end, I have broken the 50k goal for NaNo.
It was so much fun!
The funnest part was at the very end, when I needed 697 words to reach 50k. At that point, I was averaging 550-600 words per word war. I thought to myself… if I really push it, I can make it to 50k during this last word war (this was word war #10). So I began typing like mad… only to find, near the end, that I had less than a minute with over 100 words to go. I don’t think I’ve ever typed faster in that last minute as I scrambled to get the 100 words I needed. In the end, my watch alarm went off to signal me to stop, and I was cheering – I had 50,005 words.
I think that was the funnest one minute of NaNo I have ever experienced.
That is what I learned today.
November 23, 2009 at 6:09 pm
[...] It was the second funnest thing I’ve ever done for NaNo. The first funnest was when I hit 50k during a word war (had more than 100 words left and less than a minute to write – but you should read the full story). [...]
November 23, 2009 at 6:10 pm
[...] It was the second funnest thing I’ve ever done for NaNo. The first funnest was when I hit 50k during a word war (had more than 100 words left and less than a minute to write – but you should read the full story). [...]
December 1, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] favorite moment still remains that moment on Day 7, when I wrote over one hundred words in less than a minute to get to 50k. Fastest typing I’ve [...]