W minus 36,511
Well, five days in and I'm just over a quarter done. Which is pretty awesome, I must say. It's entirely possible that I'll be done the first third by the end of the day tomorrow, although I'm not convinced that Part One of three will actually fit in the first third of the word count - I may have to *gasp* write more words! If I do finish Part One, that would be a good point for certain people to begin reading with, since it will form its own little narrative arc within the larger story (assuming that anything that I haven't so much as proofread, spellchecked or even quickly scanned for particularly outrageous typos can be said to have anything as fancy as a "narrative arc").
My several days of sub-three thousand wordcounts have dropped me out of the double-pace bracket, but I'm still on track to beat my unofficial goal of the twentieth (the line marked in bold on my report card), and still way ahead of the official NaNo pace (a full ten percent ahead, in fact).
I'm also [pleased/ashamed] to report that in writing "Sanctuary: Crusade", I've started to rethink the setting a bit more. The original plan was to have three Sub-Sanctuary novels as NaNo novels for this, next and the year after to serve as simplified testbeds/playgrounds for the six "real" Sanctuary novels. In each of the three, a different side would win: Order in "Crusade", Chaos in "Heresy", and the Elementals in "Desecration". It was a nice, neat, tidy little plan.
But in an example of life imitating art imitating life, Order no longer (Spoiler!) wins in "Crusade", and my plans for the other two Sub-Sanctuary novels has been thrown for a loop by the same kind of creative chaos (or possibly chaotic creativity...I'm not quite sure yet). It's just a gut feeling so far, but at this point it feels like "Crusade" is actually the last of the Adamancy (nee Sub-Sanctuary) novels by internal chronology, with "Adamancy: Divinity" coming before it and some as-of-yet-unknown third story either before or between them. I've grown somewhat fond of the little world of Adamancy, and don't quite feel like destroying it any longer (least of all three times in a row!).
Another scandalous thought occurs to me. If I can write a quick-and-dirty first draft of a novel in as little as twenty days (knock on wood!), then I could potentially write first drafts for all three (because it just has to be three) Adamancy novels as early as the end of the year. Factor in a bit of time to enjoy the holidays and a few weeks to be absolutely sick of writing, and it still seems like a (somewhat) reasonable plan to have three rough drafts sitting in a neat little pile by the end of January. Why bother writing them all at the same time, exactly? So that they all fit together nicely in the end. It's something that would be impossible to do with a series of six meaty novels, but for three tightly plotted and written almost-novellas, it's actually possible to have them all growing at the same time and hooking together in a nice satisfying way.
And the best reasons of all? Adamancy is a more fun to write than Sanctuary, requires less research, and hasn't been the dumping ground for every story idea I've had for the better part of a decade. I'll still write the Sanctuary novels eventually (because they keep demanding that I do all the time), but I'm really enjoying my little detour to Adamancy.
My several days of sub-three thousand wordcounts have dropped me out of the double-pace bracket, but I'm still on track to beat my unofficial goal of the twentieth (the line marked in bold on my report card), and still way ahead of the official NaNo pace (a full ten percent ahead, in fact).
I'm also [pleased/ashamed] to report that in writing "Sanctuary: Crusade", I've started to rethink the setting a bit more. The original plan was to have three Sub-Sanctuary novels as NaNo novels for this, next and the year after to serve as simplified testbeds/playgrounds for the six "real" Sanctuary novels. In each of the three, a different side would win: Order in "Crusade", Chaos in "Heresy", and the Elementals in "Desecration". It was a nice, neat, tidy little plan.
But in an example of life imitating art imitating life, Order no longer (Spoiler!) wins in "Crusade", and my plans for the other two Sub-Sanctuary novels has been thrown for a loop by the same kind of creative chaos (or possibly chaotic creativity...I'm not quite sure yet). It's just a gut feeling so far, but at this point it feels like "Crusade" is actually the last of the Adamancy (nee Sub-Sanctuary) novels by internal chronology, with "Adamancy: Divinity" coming before it and some as-of-yet-unknown third story either before or between them. I've grown somewhat fond of the little world of Adamancy, and don't quite feel like destroying it any longer (least of all three times in a row!).
Another scandalous thought occurs to me. If I can write a quick-and-dirty first draft of a novel in as little as twenty days (knock on wood!), then I could potentially write first drafts for all three (because it just has to be three) Adamancy novels as early as the end of the year. Factor in a bit of time to enjoy the holidays and a few weeks to be absolutely sick of writing, and it still seems like a (somewhat) reasonable plan to have three rough drafts sitting in a neat little pile by the end of January. Why bother writing them all at the same time, exactly? So that they all fit together nicely in the end. It's something that would be impossible to do with a series of six meaty novels, but for three tightly plotted and written almost-novellas, it's actually possible to have them all growing at the same time and hooking together in a nice satisfying way.
And the best reasons of all? Adamancy is a more fun to write than Sanctuary, requires less research, and hasn't been the dumping ground for every story idea I've had for the better part of a decade. I'll still write the Sanctuary novels eventually (because they keep demanding that I do all the time), but I'm really enjoying my little detour to Adamancy.