NaNoWriMo 2024

I am writing…

The book I’m writing this year is non fiction. I have put a lot of hours into researching it. That means I talked to a lot romance scammers–mostly from Nigeria–from my own fake accounts. The result…

Well, that will be the whole book or more than one book if it gets too big. I haven’t decided on that yet.

Every day, I will show up with my word count for the day and give you a small update on how my writing is going.

Day 1
I spent most of the day writing the intro and basic information about romance scams. The rest of the day was more about restructuring the book and planning the next day.
Word count: 3333

Day 2
Today I worked on military romance scams, wrote the intro to this type of scams, tidied up conversations I’ve had with scammers who were posing as military personnel and added chapter specific red flags.

Today’s word count: 3232
Total words written: 6565

Photo below is a scene from my desk. That framed ‘friends’ photo is a gift from my soul sister, a fellow scam fighter and an incredible human-being. I’ve had the privilege to meet her face-to-face in the UK this year. I will forever cherish those memories and I hope one day the world will appreciate her efforts of keeping the world scam-free.

word count for the day: 3232
Total words written: 6565

Day 3
I’m almost halfway through 50,000 word bench already but adding my word count slowly to NaNoWriMo website because a huge chunk of those chapters will be edited and that will leave me with less written words. Tomorrow I will have reached 10,000 words though and that means I will earn yet another badge on top of all the other ones I’ve already earned.
Let’s have a look at todays numbers:

Word count for the day: 3022
Total words written: 9587

Day 4
I’ve spent most of the day tidying up a very long conversation I had with one particular scammer from Nigeria who was incredibly annoying since I pushed all his buttons and pinpointed his lies. It was 35 pages of text but I managed to reduce it down to 16 pages in the end.

Additionally, I’ve taken more notes on victim profiles and how they feel after being scammed. Let’s check out the numbers for today before I go and pick up our washing and decide what I’m cooking for tonight:

Word count for the day: 4444
Total words written: 14,031

NaNoWriMo Day 5
It’s incredibly common for romance scammers to use stolen photos of innocent people but…
Some of those scammers sometimes use thier own faces. You might think that they’re being truthful but in the end, the purpose is the same. They still want something from you. It could be a visa to come to your country or some money to help with feeding their family. It’s still not right regardless of their initial purpose they present earlier on.

Well, today I wrote about one of those scam stories using their own faces.

It was so clear that he was talking to someone with a hidden agenda. He just didn’t know that he was talking to a scam-baiter.

Now I’m going to head down to my kitchen and make some asparagus pastry. They’re in season at the moment and I managed to get some really young ones. Not imported from Peru or Mexico. I’ll wrap them up in blankets with pesto and parmesan then I’ll bake them. To go with this awesomeness (a word I picked up from scammers along the way), I’ll make pepperonata. My style; not Sicilian or anything. I make it may way.

Before I go and create wonderful dishes in the kitchen, I’d like to add my word count for today…

Words written today: 4332
Total words written: 18363
I’m getting there, Peoples 🙂

Day 6 and I’ve reached 23645 words. Almost halfway there.

I had to laugh at one of those fake doctors whom I talked to while I was doing my research for this book. He told me that his wife died of prostate cancer 🤣 He didn’t even know how to spell prostate cancer; it was ‘prostrate cancer’ 🤣

Thank God, some of them are too ignorant and not so good at getting their story right.

I’ll be back with more words tomorrow. Stay tuned, Peoples!