The Words: 2715 on my Neo. I did some sprints with @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter and a couple of word wars with some people from my region on Slack. When I realized I was 87 words away from 40k, I pushed myself to pass that threshold.

Today was a very noteworthy day for me, writing-wise. In fact, I just checked the box next to the following badge on my profile on the NaNoWriMo website:

It all started on November 6th, when I realized that I might run out of story before I reached 50,000 words. I started to brainstorm more details and backstory to add to the novel. More flashbacks to make up the meat of the story. I came up with some scenes showing the king and his best friend, who has become the nation’s greatest enemy, back when they were friends. I really liked those scenes, and it also added more words to my story.

A new sprint leader came online on the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter this evening. She announced that she going to do a series of sprints in homage to Stan Lee, and the first prompt was this: “I don’t know about you, but comics were a huge part of my childhood and definitely helped make me who I am today, so for this first sprint let’s incorporate an origin story!”

And suddenly, I knew I had to stop where I currently was in the story (which was struggling to start a new scene anyway) and write about the main character’s home and family. Only it won’t be just random backstory, but will definitely have an important purpose in the story.

The Story: After writing a bit about the aftermath of the battle I wrote about yesterday, I completely switched gears.

We get to see Lorrin visiting her family at home in a flashback. She doesn’t get to go home very often, but her parents and brother are supportive of her military career. She has a young niece who somewhat recently lost her mother, and Lorrin is regretful that she hasn’t been able to spend as much time with her niece, or her now-widowed brother, as she would like.

When I got to the end of the writing, Lorrin’s parents had just returned from helping out a neighbor, which I get the feeling is something they do a lot.

I am literally going to get to know these people from scratch tomorrow, because I didn’t even conceive of them until tonight, and they showed up right at the end of my writing time today. (Writing is fun!)

Total word count: 40,057

Don’t forget to check out today’s NaNoToons if you haven’t already: 2018 – November 13th
If the week 2 blahs have got you down, it’s a good time to check out the 3rd episode of the NaNoMusical!