The Denver region NaNoWriMo kickoff party went well! Final max head count was 32, which is lower than our usual, but we knew participation might be a bit slow this year after the past two years of virtual only.
Even if the final numbers were a bit low, we had a great group last night. Some new faces, some old ones, and a lot of familiar friends we haven't seen in three years, since the last time we had an in-person NaNoWriMo season.
The way we hold our kickoff parties, we get together at 10pm Halloween night for potluck and socializing, and then right at midnight, we start writing. The goal is to get a jump start on our word count. Since "it's not tomorrow until you sleep," it enables us to treat the first like another day when we wake up, and spend another hour or two writing. The result is often double word count (or more) on the first, which is a good way to kick off the month - which is of course part of why we do it.
I did not finish reading through my novel before midnight, in fact I'm not all that far at all, but I decided that's okay. I just kept reading through as everyone else was writing. I still have a ways to go so I'll keep working on that until I'm done, and then I can move on to the rewriting and revising.
As I was reading, I decided the very first scene will be kept as is. I had obviously already spent some time tightening and polishing that section, and I like the way it is, so I'm not going to rewrite it. It has a fantastic tone that I actually want to replicate throughout the rest of the novel, so that'll take some rewriting, revision, and tightening too, depending on the section.
To reflect the work that I did so far last night, I am counting the word count for that scene. I've decided that as I revise and rewrite, I'll just add back the word count for each scene. There's a quick little checkbox I can check in Scrivener to add a section back to the overall compile and the word count, so that's easy enough.
Hopefully I will be able to keep up the momentum throughout the month and beyond. I do want to get this novel published next year!
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