NaNoWriMo Update #3

| xeyeti

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.

NaNoWriMo Update #2

| xeyeti

Sitting at 12,052 words this morning. Didn’t get as much written yesterday as I’d have liked (I mean, i should be writing about 2000 words a day at this rate every day), but I did get the rest of the book plotted out this afternoon, so I know where I’m going from here at the very least. Plotting is probably my weakest area, so having a plan – even if it’s rough and not at all fleshed out just yet – is better that fumbling forward with no plan or end goal in mind.

That said, I need to crank out about 8000 words today to really feel good about it all, but I don’t think that’ll happen. Maybe 3000 or 4000? Let’s see where we get.

NaNoWriMo Update #1

| xeyeti

As of this moment, I’m sitting at 10,032 words, which isn’t exactly as far along as I’d like to be (at this point, I should be closer to 15,000 words), but isn’t too terrible, honestly. Breaking that 10,000-word mark was nice, and felt relatively easy, all things considered. There’s still lots of story to go through, and I’m only just now getting into the meet of Act II.

Granted, I also didn’t get a comic done last night, so now I’m behind in two artistic endeavors. Three, if you include all the music I want record and haven’t yet. Why are there only 24 hours in a day?

NaNoWriMo

| xeyeti

So what the hell, I’ll try to write a novel.

November is National Novel Writing Month, a time when amateur (and possibly less-than-amateur) writers attempt to create a draft of a full, 50,000-word novel in a single month. It’s a daunting challenge, but it’s one I’ve always wanted to try. I’ve written a number of short stories in my day, including a few that were quite lengthy (upwards of thirty typed, single-spaced pages), but I’ve never managed an actual novel-length work. I mean, 50,000 words is a lot (at an average of 250 words per double-spaced, type-written page, that’s…um…200 pages. Had to do that math). A heckuva lot.

But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? So I’m going to give it a shot. I’m already behind where I need to be (50,000 words in 30 days averages out to about 1700 words per day, and I’ve only got 6700 after six days), but I think I can catch up on the weekends. I’ve already written the first act, and I’ve got Act II mapped out and part of Act III. We’ll see what happens, I guess, and I’ll keep everyone here up to date.