Hello,

for Monday 20 February 2017 I am doing a 24 hour midnight to midnight writing marathon. I tried this on New Year’s Day and had road blocks some of which was from not outlining the books I wrote so I managed to get to 6591 words. Part of it was also that I fell asleep on a break for several hours. This time lots of coffee to drink.

For this holiday Heritage Day in Nova Scotia I am going for a 20% increase which will come out to 7910 words. That’s the minimum I am shooting for today.

I am going to go for one hour writing blocks and then take a 5 to 10 minute break. This will go to when the clock turns to Tuesday 21 February 2017.

Currently it is 2308 on Sunday 19 February 2017 so T minus 52 minutes and counting. I will update the word count for every hour.

T minus 6 minutes and counting.

T minus 4 minutes and counting.

T minus 2 minutes and counting.

T minus 1 minute – last countdown minute no more counting down. Next update will be a word count.

0000 to 0100 – 1086 words written. Taking a break for ten minutes.

0111 to 0211 – 1205 words written. Total words written 2291. Taking another break to 0230.

0230 to 0330 – 1158 words written. Total words written 3449. Almost halfway to my goal for the day and I am only three hours into it. Going to take a forty five minute to an hour break. Need a nap as I tried to take a nap when I got home from work and was unable to do so, for some reason couldn’t get to sleep and I need to recharge. So see you at or around 0500.

0500 to 0600 – 1054 words written bringing the total to 4503. Break for breakfast then another hour of writing.

0615 to 0715 – 1042 words written bringing the total to 5545. Feeling like I’m fading with the lack of sleep so I’ll take a twenty five minute break then come back for another hour of writing. Actually make this an hour and thirty to forty minutes, the lack of sleep need another nap.

1000 to 1100 – 876 word written bringing the total to 6421. Almost matched my total from New Year’s Day. I actually completed the short story I started on at midnight. Imagine what I could do if I was well rested and didn’t need to take naps. Take a break for a few minutes. Actually it was more than a few as I had a shower.

1130 to 1230 – 1045 words written bringing the total to 7466. Already passed what I wrote for the New Year’s Day marathon and less than five hundred words to my goal for the day. But once I get the goal I won’t stop there. Because my goal will be to increase the amount of words I write by a further 20% for the Easter writing marathon.

1400 to 1500 – after eating lunch I wrote 1004 words bringing the total for the day so far to 8470.

1600 to 1700 – 774 words written. Bringing the total for the day so far to 9244.

1725 to 1825 – 866 words written. This brings the total word written so far today to 10110.

1945 to 2045 – 1033 words written. Bringing the total for the day to 11143.

2055 to 2155 – 822 words written. Bringing the total for the day to 11965.

2210 to 2245 – 424 words written. completed the second short story of the day bringing the total of words written to 12389.

Things I’ve learned for today are:

1. get more rest before the thing starts so as not to have to take long naps to recharge.
2. research the stuff that I will need to know before writing. Such as one of the stories I wrote took place in the 1930’s. I should have researched the type of cars that were used in that decade.
3. have all my meals ready before the marathon day. There were two incidents that required me to take longer than ten minute breaks and those were lunch and dinner.

 

So that’s it for this month’s writing marathon. The next 24 hour marathon is in April, I’ll try it for Easter.