NaNoWriMo

BevVincent

I must be crazy, but I've signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year -- it starts tomorrow. My goal is a little bit different this time. I want to do some intensive work on the novel-in-progress. I have a 14,000 word beginning but I have pushed the manuscript aside several times this year, so I'm going to try to use the "contest" to motivate me back to it.



I don't have a nice week-long vacation at a beach house scheduled this year to help me out, though. In fact, with World Fantasy Convention in Austion this weekend and a trip to visit our daughter later in the month, I have about 9 days during November when I probably won't be able to work on the manuscript much or at all.



But since I did 75K in 30 days last year, maybe I can squeeze out 50K in the same period this year with those handicaps. We'll see!

Lou_Sytsma

Good luck!

BevVincent

1300 words yesterday and 1300 this morning. Not exactly NaNoWriMo pace, but I'm pleased to be working on the novel again and making forward progress. I hope to get a little writing done this weekend while I'm at World Fantasy--but I'm not counting on it.

BevVincent

Another 1300-word day. I managed over 1800 the day before yesterday, so I'm up over 9000 for the month so far. Still way behind schedule, though. I'm hoping for a productive weekend.

BevVincent

Very close to 15,000 words after the weekend's work. Still lagging the NaNoWriMo pace, but moving right along.

BevVincent

Nearly up to 22,000 words, and getting very close to "breaking even" with NaNoWriMo. You can see an interesting bar chart of my progress this month here.



Or here. Red represents days when I was behind the curve, grey is the new revised average wpd that I'd need to finish on track, and green is the amount I've gone over the average when I got ahead.

BevVincent

For the first time this month, I'm ahead of the game by about 1400 words. Almost a full day ahead, in fact, which means that if I keep on banking extra words for the next week, I won't have to worry so much about not writing while I'm away for US Thanksgiving.

BevVincent

Only 14,000 words left to meet the target, and twelve days left in the month. Twelve hundred words a day and I'm there. My current goal is to be very close to--if not at--50,000 words by the end of the day on Tuesday. 3500 words per day for three days would put me over the top.



Even if I fall a little short, I'll have three days at the end of the month to pick up the slack. I can't believe I'm actually going to make it, barring unforseen circumstances.



I had a dream this morning that helped put an important element into the story. All of these disparate threads converge at a single point in the Saturday afternoon point of the story, but I had no idea of what was going to happen once the focal character arrived on stage. Now I do. Or, at least I now know why this focal event is so important, and what happened all those years ago to precipitate it.



The first thing I wrote this morning was a 400-word prolog that sets the tone. It is the beginning of a thread that I still have to ravel through the rest of the material I've already written, but that will be a good task for me to tackle while I'm traveling next week. Take a printout of the manuscript and find places to thread it into the existing story.



I'm very happy with how things are going so far, and I hope to have the first draft finished well before the end of the year. NaNoWriMo is such a motivator.

BevVincent

Less than 9000 words to go for the goal. I only have to average 800 words per day for the rest of the month to make it. And to think I almost surrendered a while back!

Lou_Sytsma

Inspiring Bev! Very inspiring. 8-)

BevVincent

I like the way those little dark grey bars on the remaining days are shrinking! A mere 300 wpd to finish it out.

BevVincent

Somehow, I really think I'm going to make it! ;D

BevVincent

I decided to beat the rush to validate word count tomorrow and uploaded my November output today. So, I am now officially a: