My Third Serious Attempt at NaNoWriMo

November has arrived once more, and it’s that time of year all over again. Just as I did last year and the year before, I am once again throwing my hat into the ring and working on NaNoWriMo. As usual, if I’m going to do this again, there are going to be
some ground rules.

A Short Reflection

But just like last year, my goals and approach will change somewhat compared to last year. In fact, I would say that my attempt last year was somewhat disastrous because I tried to use the Windows version of Scrivener on Arch Linux (via Wine), which messed up my word count entirely.

That not only messed up my progress, but it made me feel less motivated during the challenge. To make things more annoying, I had gone the extra mile to make a monthly log in my bullet journal to track word count alongside the built-in word counter, and my results being so skewed caused me to not finish it.

But this time, I’ve had a chance to reflect on all of that, and I’m confident things will be different this time around.

Changes for 2025

I’m still using Scrivener, I can say that much, but the difference this time is where I’ll be using it. Specifically, I’m going to use a much older version on my Power Mac G5, which I have used for the past summer every now and again to work on the existing draft of my novel.

You may be wondering why I would even bother with a system that’s 20 years old now, but I have a few of my reasons.

• I picked up this used system at the start of the summer as a bit of a project. I was primarily inspired by The Original Collector on YouTube because I agreed that just because a system is over 20 years old doesn’t mean it still can’t work perfectly fine.
• The G5 is low on frills and high on functionality. It was designed in a different time, when we expected our computers to work as best as possible based on the overall value.
• I have it running Sorbet Leopard, which I can best describe as a tricked-out version of Mac OS X Leopard (the last version that still supports PowerPC architecture) with a lot of quality of life updates and customizations.
• I put a tremendous amount of effort over the past few months upgrading the system to make it feel insanely top-of-the-line for its time period. Even for something this old, it still punches above its weight.

In short, it’s a truly remarkable machine, and I love using it for writing in general, whether it’s my current novel or even this very blog post draft.

This is a PowerPC system that runs an older version of Scrivener that doesn’t support built-in word count each day. Rather, it only counts the total number of words in a project, meaning that I’m going to have to manually track the words.

Since a lot of PowerPC software is considered abandonware, I was able to get a copy of Office 2008 for this system from Macintosh Garden with no strings attached. That said, I’m going to be using this version of Excel to track overall word counts with a table.

But unlike the past two years, I’m not only tracking word count, but also chapter progression, giving me a better idea of how long specific chapters take or will take. Granted, I don’t have a strict set length for chapters; they typically end when it feels right, regardless of how long they turn out. I’m mostly doing this as a form of personal insight to show how quickly or slowly I’m moving the narrative along at various points.

Another change is that the prequel I started last year didn’t really pan out. I talked about it briefly in last year’s reflection and results, but I won’t be writing in that one after all. I don’t want to let myself become distracted by a separate project this time around.

Lastly, as the screenshot shows, I’ll be starting at the 77,649 word mark on chapter 36, which is a chapter currently still in progress. This is a revealing word count to start on as well, as it tells me how much I’ve written since November 30, 2024, where I originally stopped with a grand total of 48,898 words. But speaking of word count…

Goals and Challenges This Year

I was immensely disappointed in how I fell short on word count last year compared to my 2023 results. Comparing both years, I actually regressed by 2,202 words while missing a day in my writing streak as well.

This year, I am more optimistic about hitting 25,000 words during the span of November while writing daily. I know it’s not as much as I could still potentially do, but I want to at least have something to show for it by the time November is over. It would still be a new personal best for NaNoWriMo altogether, too.

There are a few other things I’ve accounted for to help me with writing:

• I’m getting up earlier just to dedicate more writing time to the story each day.
• I’m going to work on a strategy before this entire blog post goes up where I dedicate time to outlining. By the time you read this, I will have already planned several once-nebulous aspects of the story that have otherwise kept me in a light form of writer’s block.
• I’ll log any fleeting ideas, should they strike me, anywhere I am, whether it’s in my Second Brain or my pocket notebook in my wallet.

One last thing is more like a risk that came up, but I will be taking a flight to visit family closer to Thanksgiving. As a result, there is a slight chance I won’t be able to update the existing draft in the final stretch of NaNoWriMo. I was counting on exporting my progress and seeing it it could open on a modern copy of Scrivener that I run on my M1 MacBook Air workstation.

Doing This The Write Way

I’m hoping to not only redeem myself from last year, but exceed my expectations. But what about you? Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? Did you do well? If not, what happened and why? Were you planning on trying this year? What do you think of NaNoWriMo in general? Feel free to leave some comments; I’d love to know what you think. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to need to pick back up on chapter 36.