Making my mark
Tomorrow is the 15th (maybe today by the time I post this, but whatever). By that point, one should have 25,000 words written if one wants to make a leisurely go of the rest of the month, without the hustle and bustle of ZOMG I have to write 17,000 words TODAY. I have prepared for this by being almost completely to the winner's mark.
46,054 / 50,000
(92.1%)
And so I find that I must change my marks.
46,054 / 90,000
(51.2%)
If I work hard again tomorrow I can be a NaNo winner by the 15th (and today was a 4k day, so it's entirely possible). Even more important, I'm more than halfway done with my secondary goal, 90k. My primary goal, which was never really wordcount, is to be finished with this novel at the end of November. I think it's possible that I might make that. I think it's also possible that I will get pretty darned close and be able to do mop up during December.
According to my outline (which I haven't even looked at today, so maybe I should do that...) I'm at the halfway point. The setup has happened, the big reveal will, um, reveal itself tomorrow (intentional cliff hangers make me want to write more, so I like to end on a holding note), the true fight will become clear for the characters and it's just downhill from there to set up the conclusion.
But I must admit, there were doubts.
Three or four days ago, I reached outline points 7 and 8. There are 17 outline points, which means that I was effectively halfway done. That scared me because I didn't think I could reach my 90k if I was already halfway done. Hell, I was worried about 50k at that pace. When I was planning that outline, though, I didn't account for the character interaction. Rook and Icarra were great together, Lark and Lethe had heated words, and Rhindy made a surprising change by becoming an old widow instead of a young girl. Who'da thunk it!
The best part about this whole project is I can see where I can go with it. Snippets of ideas for themes are growing in my head and I will need to go back once I'm done and slip them in all the right places :P. I'm pretty sure now that I want to include an end scene that happens just a few minutes before they (quite literally) lose their minds, whereas before I was only vaguely considering it. I may back out of that decision, but I feel like it does two things. First of all, it lets me play with the characters-as-they-were in the present tense for once and second, it gives the reader a little bit of closure, seeing that the people they became are better than the people they were before, even if the people they were before have their strong points. This would make more sense if you knew Rook and Rook's story. Maybe someday you will ;).
NaNo is entirely freeing this year in a way that it wasn't last year. I'm not concerned about making things all fit and work together perfectly. I don't need to go back in and check my facts and my timelines. Part of that is because this year I have an outline on paper instead of in my head. The in-my-head outline kept morphing in ways I didn't anticipate and I kept losing things. The paper outline has morphed a number of times, but I don't have to keep track of those plotlines and their changes now, just the changes. The plotlines are already on paper. Some days I just spew lines on paper to get them out and get going. I know it's going to be cut. If I didn't, I wouldn't be a very good writer (or editor, for that matter). It's nice to have that safety net of later. Procrastination is great, but it also lets you move forward even when you want to stop and fix the little things. The little things are for later. NaNo is for now.
46,054 / 50,000
(92.1%)
And so I find that I must change my marks.
46,054 / 90,000
(51.2%)
If I work hard again tomorrow I can be a NaNo winner by the 15th (and today was a 4k day, so it's entirely possible). Even more important, I'm more than halfway done with my secondary goal, 90k. My primary goal, which was never really wordcount, is to be finished with this novel at the end of November. I think it's possible that I might make that. I think it's also possible that I will get pretty darned close and be able to do mop up during December.
According to my outline (which I haven't even looked at today, so maybe I should do that...) I'm at the halfway point. The setup has happened, the big reveal will, um, reveal itself tomorrow (intentional cliff hangers make me want to write more, so I like to end on a holding note), the true fight will become clear for the characters and it's just downhill from there to set up the conclusion.
But I must admit, there were doubts.
Three or four days ago, I reached outline points 7 and 8. There are 17 outline points, which means that I was effectively halfway done. That scared me because I didn't think I could reach my 90k if I was already halfway done. Hell, I was worried about 50k at that pace. When I was planning that outline, though, I didn't account for the character interaction. Rook and Icarra were great together, Lark and Lethe had heated words, and Rhindy made a surprising change by becoming an old widow instead of a young girl. Who'da thunk it!
The best part about this whole project is I can see where I can go with it. Snippets of ideas for themes are growing in my head and I will need to go back once I'm done and slip them in all the right places :P. I'm pretty sure now that I want to include an end scene that happens just a few minutes before they (quite literally) lose their minds, whereas before I was only vaguely considering it. I may back out of that decision, but I feel like it does two things. First of all, it lets me play with the characters-as-they-were in the present tense for once and second, it gives the reader a little bit of closure, seeing that the people they became are better than the people they were before, even if the people they were before have their strong points. This would make more sense if you knew Rook and Rook's story. Maybe someday you will ;).
NaNo is entirely freeing this year in a way that it wasn't last year. I'm not concerned about making things all fit and work together perfectly. I don't need to go back in and check my facts and my timelines. Part of that is because this year I have an outline on paper instead of in my head. The in-my-head outline kept morphing in ways I didn't anticipate and I kept losing things. The paper outline has morphed a number of times, but I don't have to keep track of those plotlines and their changes now, just the changes. The plotlines are already on paper. Some days I just spew lines on paper to get them out and get going. I know it's going to be cut. If I didn't, I wouldn't be a very good writer (or editor, for that matter). It's nice to have that safety net of later. Procrastination is great, but it also lets you move forward even when you want to stop and fix the little things. The little things are for later. NaNo is for now.