See, it’s funny because the American government spent years systematically attempting to wipe out native populations.
Wait, no, that’s not funny, it’s that other thing. Horrible. Yeah, that.
Note: I myself am actually part Native American. Not much, but my family can trace back to the Dawes Scrolls, so it’s official and all.
Here we are on the sixteenth. I’m up to 33,219 words as of this posting. I need to average just over 1200 words per day for the rest of the month (not including the rest of today, when I can probably knock out at least another thousand or so words).
The problem, of course, is the one I identified a few days ago: I’ve pretty much reached the end of the story I was telling. Everything’s wrapping up, everything’s tied together and running to the end. I can probably stretch it out to about 37,000, if I’m good, but that’s gonna be about it.
So I did some brainstorming last night. I think I may have to go back and add a big section to the beginning, another case that I allude to in the story already but don’t really flesh out. If I have that case in the story first, I can probably squeeze another 13,000 words out, easy.
Granted, I don’t have that particular case fully plotted, so it may not go as smoothly as I’d like…
Seriously, we pass by it every day on our way to and from work: a house with 5 identical Rav4s parked out front. Same model year for all 5. It’s bizarre.
First period planning is the worst. You get no breaks during the day. None. You must have a bladder of steel.
As of this morning, I’m sitting at 23,869 words. I’m on pace to get halfway through by this evening, which is actually ahead of schedule (what with today only being the 14th). I still need to go back and flesh out some more sections of the story, but I’m pretty confident I can get to at least 40,000 words by the end of the month.
I have revised my plans for the plot, ditching some of the stuff I’d originally planned because it was crap and coming up with some stuff that I think will work much better. We’ll see.
Actually, she often offers to do this, or insists that I draw her nude. Don’t know that I’ll share any of that here, though.
Managed to knock out another 3,500 words last night, bringing the current total to a little over 21,500. This actually put me up a bit, which is nice. I just have to average 1,583 words per day for the rest of the month to hit 50,000 words now, down from 1,667. About half of what I did last night was going back and filling in bits here and there, expanding some ideas, giving a bit more exposition, etc., while the other half was pushing the plot forward a bit with a nice conversation between the protagonist and one of his main antagonists.
The plan, then, is to try to average about 1,000-1,500 words per day on the weekdays, and make up any extra on the weekends. If the past week is any indication, I ought to be able to manage that pretty well.
It’s in color! Maybe that will distract you from the lack of actual funny?
So, as of quittin’ time Sunday evening, I’m up to just a hair over 18,000 words. I’m averaging about 1636 words per day, which is just around where I should be to get 50,000 words by the end of November. I made up a lot of ground today, knocking out about 6,000 words just this afternoon/evening.
I am anticipating a slight problem going forward, though: I don’t think I’m going to have enough material to hit 50,000 words.
As the story is progressing, I’ll be lucky to top out around 30,000 or 35,000 at best. That’s…well, more than a little shy of where I need to be, honestly.
There is some filling out I can do with more of the backstory. This particular novel is taking place in a universe I’ve already established with other short stories and such (including the super-secret comics project that’d get up and running if my artist could get a few more pages knocked out). As such, character interactions are based in large part on previous interactions that they’ve had in other stories.
So, I can always give a brief run-down of some of those other stories (I know I’m going to have to with at least two characters, just so their interactions with the protagonist and each other make sense), which should add some extra background and at least a few thousand more words. But I may have to rethink part of the novel, add some scenes in earlier in the book.
It’s a work in progress, I guess.
