Just a quick note – after the success of the first 100k words100 days challenge this January, we decided that we wanted to run another one during the summer. Starting on July 1st, it ran for 100 days, and finished yesterday on October 8th.

And I succeeded! Early summer writing was limited due to other, non-writing projects. In early August, when the plan called for 40,000 words, I was sitting at 15,000 words. In early September, I managed some days with over 2,000 words written, which brought me more on track. From the 17th September onwards, I dedicated myself a little more, having days of 2,000, 3,000 and even 4,000 words. In the past week, I’ve had two, 4,000 word days, which brought me to the brink of success. I finished tonight with 100,496 words written for the challenge.

This has seen me write one almost novel-length thriller (45,000 words), complete a crime novel (adding 21,000 words to the previously-written 44,000 to make 65,000 words) and begin several shorter works in the horror, thriller and crime genres. I’ve also done some planning for NaNoWriMo 2013, and written several blog posts.

All in all, a tremendous personal success.

As a group, we wrote over 1.65 million words. Eight of the group managed to write over 100,000 words, and one writer managing over 160,000 words during the challenge. All along, there was fantastic support in the Facebook group created for these challenges, and we shall be continuing the support process during NaNoWriMo as a number of us are taking on that challenge as well (50,000 words during the month of November). And next January, we shall be restarting the next 100kwords100days challenge.

My thanks go to Sally Quilford for coming up with the idea in the first place, and the rest of the group for their support and banter.