50,000 Divided by 30

1,666.6 repeating. That seems oddly satanic for a writing event, a celebration of right braininess, but in any event, that is the number of words you need to write per day if you're going to make it to the end of National Novel Writing Month with a 50,000 word fictional work. You could also go by rough number of double-spaced pages per day, which rounds up to six.

Rounding up is key. For example, if you hit 1750 words for ten days (a nice running start), you have effectively given yourself a half-day respite - you can have a day where it's just not in you to crank out the words. The biggest deal about the daily number is that you cannot fall behind too much or it just becomes impossible. The 25th of November arrives and you have to write for three days straight to get back into sync with the terminal goal.

This is half by way of pep talk to my #nanoPDX tweeps and partly to remind myself that, as the sun rises on Carmen's birthday and the candy hangover subsides, I have an assload of writing to do.

Good luck to everyone!