The Words: 2162 on my Neo. (I have typed most of my NaNoNovel this year on my Neo, and I love using it!)

While today was a difficult day for writing for many American Wrimos, my family’s big Thanksgiving isn’t until Saturday. We did have a bit of a Thanksgiving here in my house, but it was all simple to make, and I had some free time in the late afternoon.

I checked out @NaNoWordSprints and caught a 7-minute and then a 10-minute and had written about 1000 words. Next up was a 15-minute sprint, but I skipped that while I looked through my outline to find some spots where I’d written notes for more flashbacks that I could add in. I also checked through my writing from the month so far, because I knew I’d made some notes like that in there too.

Then I was ready for the next sprint, which was 20 minutes. I wrote just over 1000 words in that sprint, and decided that was good for the day.

The Story: By the end of the first sprint, I realized that I was repeating a conversation from earlier in the month (earlier this week, even). Considering that this arc will likely be boiled down to a short explanation in the next draft, I definitely took it too far. It was time to finish it so I could move on.

This story has taken a turn from the original plan. It was meant to be a light romance, even with the wars and fighting in the background. When I began to make connections to my other stories, it started to go a new direction. Now, I truly don’t know if it’s going to end up being a romance story where other important things happen, or if it’s going to be a story about this country (which I still haven’t named yet) that is so completely different than the main country in my stories, living life without knowledge of the magic-type abilities that a lot of the rest of the world uses, and what happens when they become aware of it.

I think the latter is most likely to happen, which I’m okay with. It might severely affect both the structure of the story, as well as the title, but we’ll see. I’m actually pretty excited about what this means for my other stories, and looking forward to doing at least some early revision on the structure, but that will have to wait until after NaNo. First, I want to get the draft done.

I plan to write next the 4 scenes I noted today that I wanted to add into the story, all flashbacks that give some backstory to the 2 wars that this country has been dealing with in this story, which at the same time gives some backstory and insight into the king himself as a character. Then I will go on to finish the actual “present-time” part of the story, which is the main story.

So after skipping a sprint to make notes about the extra scenes I want to write, I started on the first one for the last sprint. It is showing the king as a teenager, having a conversation with his dad (the king at the time), in which his dad is telling him about their country’s main enemy to the north, and how the animosity between their countries got started.

One last note–during week 2, I began to worry that I would run out of story before the month ended. I did such a good job adding scenes and more story to tell that now I am uncertain I will finish the draft before the month ends. I think I’ll need to step up my daily word counts to avoid this situation.

Total word count: 58,648

Don’t forget to check out today’s NaNoToons if you haven’t already: 2018 – November 22nd