This weekend was very good for my writing effort. I’m now halfway there for NaNoWriMo 2021! I’ve written 25,120 words total this month, which means I’m now officially a day ahead in daily words – tomorrow being the halfway mark of the challenge and requiring 25,005 words. At least according to my statistics on the NaNoWriMo website. I have no idea where the five extra words come from, either.

With a little bit of luck and willpower, I will be able to carry this lead through the challenge as a rescue blanket by consistently hitting my daily goals.

I’ve now written 20,498 words as part of my NaNoWriMo effort this year. The needed amount to stay on target for today is 20,004 words – so I am right on par.

That sounds better than it is in reality, however, since the last few days, writing has been a real struggle and I failed my goal a couple of times. So far, I’ve managed to make up for it, but I do not feel comfortable scraping along just above the needed amount of words. A few slip ups without immediately making up for them will let you fall off the wagon quickly and my previous NaNoWriMo experience tells me that once you reach that point, it’s all over. Therefore, I’m aiming at getting ahead at least one day’s worth of writing or more, if possible. That way, I’d have a bit of a safety blanket. I really want to win the challenge again this year.

In some thoroughly good news, however, I’ve now just about doubled the total length of the book!

I’m happy to announce that this project has received a grant from the federal government here in Germany. The German copyright collection agency for writers, VG Wort, and the Commissioner for Culture and Media of the federal government have created the programme Neustart Kultur to promote writers in the wake of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. As part of this programme, I have received a grant of €5000 over four months (the grant period started on 30 October). More specifically, I have received €4500 now and will get another €500 if I reach my goal for the grant, which is to finish the novel. I think it is pretty cool that they considered my project, even though I’m writing the novel in English and only plan to translate it to German later.

In order to facilitate me reaching the goal under this grant, I have joined NaNoWriMo again this year. It perfectly fell together with the start of the grant, after all. In case you aren’t aware, the National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is a global community of people trying to put 50,000 words to paper during the month of November. I won it once in 2011, while still at university in Bonn, and binned the novel. I entered GRIM DEEP in 2018 and in 2019 and failed miserably both times. Maybe this year, motivated by the grant and the ten-year-anniversary of my original win, I can pull it off. If you have a NaNoWriMo account, you can follow my efforts on my profile on the website. I also plan to provide updates on my progress via my Twitter account.