Yes, I’m watching each and every one of you, just like the Geico money.

(for those not familiar.)

And so far everyone’s doing an excellent job– OR ARE THEY??? Well, everybody’s still innit at least.

With the first five days done, let’s see where we stand.

• The break-down:

1. A “Knock-out” is 0-249 words. (After the three Days of Reprieve are exhausted!)
2. An “Update” is 250-999 words.
3. A  “Session” is 1,000-1,667 words.
4. A “Tougher-than-NaNo” is anything greater than 1,667.
5. A “THE END!” is when you’ve completed your WIP and type ‘THE END’.

1st:

Merrilee, as usual, is a fierce opponent! But ouch, two Days of Reprieve already. Five days in and this is getting verrrry interesting. Laid-back, but iiiinteresting. Yep, she’s kicking our laid-back butts.

2nd:

Hm, the NPI veterans seem to be doing quite a bit better than the newbies so far. Does that actually mean anything? Maybe, maybe not…. We shall see.

3rd:

I didn’t expect to be towards the front of the pack with this many participants and my laid-back attitude. There’s been days where I’ve had to force myself to write, but it’s paid off; I’m producing some very worthwhile & workable prose that I would’ve never done otherwise.

4th:

Clean, beautiful, consistent word counts. Laid-back, yet you’re ahead of a lot of people in this event so far. Well-done!

5th:

Judging by the first four days, you’re doing really good. You more than made up for your goose egg on the 3rd with strong showings on both the first and fourth. Keep it up!

6th: 

Nice consistent numbers, and day 5 was a day to read books for Julie. Great job so far!

7th:

Very strong start. But I’d imagine following up NaNoWriMo with more structured writing is a tough thing to do. I’m watching for your day 6 post, hoping that airplane trip yielded more words.

8th: 

Deb joined up on day 2! Some strong days here, and you’re definitely writing every day, but it’s too easy to let things distract us and before we know it, we’ve lost our day. A big part of NovelPI is learning how to get that first 250 before logging into those social timesinks.

9th: 

Terri joined up on day 2 with a strong start. Day 4 unfortunately has to count as a Day of Reprieve. I’m hoping your Day 5 post will be up soon (or did I miss it?) Oh, and don’t forget to use the hashtag #novelpi at the end of each tweet– We’re using it in order to search each other’s wordcounts and give each other encouragement ;)

10th:  

Deniz just joined the fun today. So far this month she’s written 500 words so I went ahead and put it down for her Day 5, a nice strong start.

THE CONSENSUS:

Hey, nobody said this was going to be easy.

Wait. I did.

If you have three question marks (???) as a tally for one of your days, it means I couldn’t find it. Be sure to let me know how many words you wrote on that day. Also let me know if I missed any THE ENDs, because I thought there were two so far this month but I was only able to track down one of them.

Well, that’s twelve … TWELVE(!!!) days of reprieve so far. Keep in mind you each only get THREE before you’ve run out. Last time we ran this, there was only one Day of Reprieve allowed (‘Back in my day!’).

Maybe this is too laid back. Maybe I’m just being too soft. But for now, let’s keep riding this lazy, crazy river and see where it takes us. After all, we’ve written 17,229 words so far!