Mist and Shadows

One fifth of the way through the month I have done one fifth of the story – 10,060 words to be exact.

Yesterday was not a day conducive to writing. Between a nephew’s birthday, helping my brother work on building a deck out the back and other matters I didn’t get a chance to start writing until nine at night and could then only manage enough to hit the mark to stay on schedule. Today promises to be equally as busy, which only leaves me to wonder if I’ll make the 1667 words needed for today.

At least the story is making progress, having now reached chapter five.

And so we are done with day five of NaNoWriMo. Total a the moment is 8800 words. The target for the end of day five was 8334 so I’m just managing to keep ahead of the target to reach 50000 words by the end of the month.

So far I haven’t had any major interruptions. Day six looks like it may have some – I’ll be out a lot of the day, limiting just how much time I have to write. I do have that buffer but it is very small, One of these days I’ll have to have a really big day of writing otherwise I’m going to end up falling behind and if that happens I may not catch up again.

Four days down, twenty six to go. So far my total is up to 7642 words. That puts me just ahead of schedule – the goal for the end of day four was 6667 words to reach that magic 50,000.

So far I have done the first three chapters, introducing the main characters. I have also done my first fight scene. It requires a lot of work when it comes time to rewrite and polish. While a fair bit happens in the fight it is fairly minimal in the descriptions, as is much of the rest of the story.

Still, I am making progress and that is the main thing.

Day Three of NaNoWriMo has come and gone, which means we are 1/10th of the way through.

Output for day three was a little lacking, only managing a bit over 1000 words, but total output is up to 5530 words. Which means that at the current rate I will make the 50,000 word total with a couple of days to spare.

I could do much better though. And speaking of better I read on twitter of someone who managed 20,000 words in a single day. 20,000. I dream of being that productive. I think the best day I have every managed was around 7,000 and that was a long time ago. There are numerous reasons I don’t, starting with a bad work effort and being easily distracted.

The aim for the day is to do a lot more than 1000 words. There are a few things I need to do but most of the day should be free for writing.

And we have completed day two of NaNoWriMo. The total word count to date stands at 4433, which is ahead of schedule to hit the 50,000 word mark.

Of course there will be days when life gets in the way and you can’t get much or anything done and so a buffer is needed.

So far that word counts includes the prologue, chapter one and part of chapter three. Yes, the chapters aren’t very long – yet. My plan for NaNoWriMo is to write the rough first draft of the novel and not worry about the polish or the like. I’ll do that later. For me I find it much easier to do a rough draft that is about half the length of the story and when I do the polishing and rewriting I fill the story out. Rewrites seem to double the length of my stories by adding all the detail and descriptions that were missing in the rough draft.

The rough draft is a skeleton – it may mention that there is a small town by the sea and that is about it. The rewrite adds flavour to it, mentioning any notable landmarks, styles of buildings, hints of people living there and what they do and things like that. The village may turn out to be build on cliffs overlooking the sea, the houses wood and thatch and exist by farming. Or it may be on a bay with stone buildings and gets by on fishing and trade.

Normally until rewrite I don’t know details like that.

Day One of NaNoWriMo is done. Total output 1759 words.

Should have done more, but at least I hit the average needed to make 50,000 words over 30 days.

To date I’ve been working on the prologue and chapter three – skipped right over chapter one and two. The reason for that is chapter three was one of the earliest scenes that I had in my head from many years ago so I want to get it done first and then move back to older scenes.

Only a week until NaNoWriMo kicks off.

I’ve now got the plan for the novel written up – around 2000 words of plot details and the order it all happens in.

Getting excited about getting this done.