NaNoWriMo Days 27-28 – and done!
Day 28, and I’m officially declaring myself done. OK, so I haven’t “won” NaNoWriMo, as in I haven’t passed 50k. But it’s an arbitrary total, a nice round number that just about qualifies as “novel length”. What matters, as always, is Finishing the Damned Story. So yes, I’ve written the closing scenes for the book, and I have a much more solid idea about where I’m going with the story now. Sure, I could go back and fill in some more scenes – but things have changed a little from my original plan, and I feel like it would be a waste of time writing these scenes only to have to rewrite them in a few weeks’ time. I have as complete a story as I need to take into the next stage, which is all I...
Read MoreNaNoWriMo Day 26
Today was surprisingly rubbish on the word-count front – I knew I needed to plan the big action set-piece before I could write some more, but hadn’t bargained on being so brain-dead that I couldn’t string two sentences togther once I was done with the planning On the plus side, I made a first pass at blocking the set-piece using Playmobil figures, just as I did last time. I still had the figures set up from last time, so it was just a case of setting out some boxes on my desk to represent the main locations and moving the figures around, taking photos at each stage to record the progression of the scene. It showed up some potential flaws in my ideas but gave me new ones as well, so all was not lost! Of course now I want to go and buy more...
Read MoreNaNoWriMo Day 25
Not quite so spectacular a writing day today – I was mentally exhausted from yesterday’s marathon and facing the most complicated part of the book, so progress was slow. Still, I made nearly 2/3 of my target, so now I’m down to less than 2k a day to complete the 50k by Friday. I’m calling that a win! Quote of the day: He stood in the doorway, feet apart, hands braced on the halberd before him. Even more ominously, he wore an executioner’s hood, so like the masks worn by the Huntsmen on their rides. The man’s eyes glinted through the slits in the black leather. Daily word count: 3,165 Running total: 40,463
Read MoreNaNoWriMo Day 24
Well, I’m delighted to say that the maths paid off – I managed to squeak over my humungous word count target in time for dinner, so I was able to take the rest of the evening off. As mentioned in my earlier post, I did it in short sprints with breaks in between, and actually managed a better pace than I’d expected – close to my top speed of 900 words per hour. I did start to seriously flag after 4k, though; I had to take another extended break and a soak in the bath whilst I planned the next scene. Anyway I’ve written about a chapter and a half today, and whilst there are a few shaky parts, there’s also some good stuff in there, so I’m very pleased with my progress. Now all I have to do is repeat the same process tomorrow...
Read MoreNaNoWriMo – doing the maths
Today I decided to do my best to try and catch up, after a rather unproductive week, so I turned to maths to help me work out how much I need to write each day. I’m currently on a little over 32k – let’s call it 32 dead, to keep the numbers simple (always better to be pessimistic in these situations!). 50000 – 32000 = 18000 left to write 18000 / 7 = 2571 per day That’s just about doable (I wrote 2280 last Monday) but a tough challenge. Let’s assume I can hit the standard 1,667 on a weekday and do more at weekends: 18000 – (5 x 1667) = 9665 9665 / 2 = 4833 per weekend day That’s also just about doable – I may not have broken 2.5k at all this NaNoWriMo, but I did 10k in a weekend on my first attempt, just...
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