The Words: 2797 total words for the day, only 4 words more than yesterday. I had planned to stop at 2000 words today, but my daughter and I finally managed to catch the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter in action today. As much as I enjoy writing alongside that feed, my daughter likes it even more. So we joined in for the last 10 minutes of a 20-minute sprint, then did a 15-minute one. Then they announced a #1k30, and I told my daughter I didn’t need that many more words, and that I didn’t want to get too far ahead. She just gave me this ornery look (she’s a little behind, so she certainly needed the words) and said I could write less tomorrow. So we went for it, and thus I wrote almost 800 words more than I meant to.
The Story: A rocky relationship came to an official end, and the Big Mystery of this story really got started today. I am constantly realizing that I’m not writing things quite right, due to trying to write fast, and have to let it go for now. My biggest concern is that relationship I mentioned—I’m pretty sure it was due to end when it did, but I’m not certain it should have been as rocky as it was leading up to that, for the sake of the mystery being mysterious. That’s one thing I’ll have to look at more closely in editing.
Total word count: 15,727
If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 6, 2011! And in case you need some extra inspiration, check out the 2nd episode of the NaNoMusical!
The Words: 2793 total words for the day, which were a roller coaster in regards to how good I felt about what I was writing as I went. At times it was flowing well and I liked what was coming out, but a few times, nothing seemed to be working right.
I took a good look at how much of my outline I’ve gotten through so far, versus how much is left, and I think this story is going to be one of the shortest first drafts in the series. I may try to do some brainstorming over the next few days to see if I can come up with a side plot to include or some other way to fill out the story (with something of substance, not useless filler). It’s worked before. But in the meantime, I’m lowering my daily goal to 2000 words per day (from 2500).
The Story: I wasn’t sure how to include scenes from the antagonist’s point of view without giving away who it was, so I started out by just writing those scenes in 1st person and never using that person’s name. I figured if it didn’t work, I could change it later. I did 3 scenes like that in today’s writing, and I’m kind of liking it. I can’t guarantee I won’t still change it some day after all, but I’ll keep going this way this month at least.
Total word count: 12,930
If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 5, 2011!
The Words: 2600 words total for the day, and I broke 10k words!
I have a good feeling that most of my writing this month will be similar to what it’s been so far, doing most of my writing in sprints alongside my daughter at whatever time of the day we can fit it in together, then maybe doing some more by myself in the evening to get the rest of my words. She insisted I check the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter several times, as she likes doing sprints with them too, but again today, they were between sprint leaders the entire time we were writing.
The Story: Things finally started flowing a little better today, though I did have a couple of moments where I veered off course due to trying to pump out words during a sprint, only to realize that what I was writing wouldn’t work for later parts of the story. Normally I don’t mind going off-outline, but there are some specific things that have to happen the right way for this story to work, and none of the ways I was getting off track were particularly ground-breaking, so they weren’t worth pursuing.
Total word count: 10,137
If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 4, 2011!
The Words: 2183 words total for the day, a little less than I had planned to write per day, but I had enough extra from the previous days that I’m still on par with my 2500-words-per-day total for the day.
My daughter and I didn’t get any writing done during the day, and then we were gone until after 9 pm. We did one 10-minute sprint together before she went to bed, so she’s behind now. She’s got plenty of time to catch up, though. After she went to bed, I did a couple of 15-minute sprints alone (the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter was on break again—bad luck so far this year!).
The Story: The story has really gotten going now, but I’m struggling with keeping characterization correct. Though the main character in this book hasn’t been in the previous books that much yet, he still keeps coming across as a lot less loyal and fair than I always believed him to be. I think I’m leaning too hard into the scandal, I guess thinking it’ll provide for a better conflict, but I’m going to have to fix that later.
Total word count: 7537
If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 3, 2011!
Today I did 3 10-minute sprints with my 11-year-old daughter and then later one 15-minute sprint alone to get to my goal of 2500 for the day. I haven’t even made use of the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter this year yet, which is unusual for me. Though to be fair, they were on break both of the times I checked today.
The Story: So far I’m mostly setting one character up as irrational, almost bi-polar, and I’m not sure I want her to be that way. I may have to tone it down in the future. But this is all from the perspective of one man, her boyfriend, who knows she’s upset about something, but isn’t sure how to help (or not help) in the way she’d most prefer. So maybe it’s actually pretty accurate.
Total word count: 5354
If you want to join me in my journey through the second year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 2, 2011!
I went into this NaNo not terribly prepared. I haven’t had a writing habit of any kind for much of this year, for a mixture of different reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty I’m having revising the next book in my series. I allowed life to get in the way of my writing because it was easier than pushing through. I’m not happy about it, but that’s in the past now. My head’s so far from any kind of writing place that I questioned whether or not I’d even do NaNo this year, compounded by the concern that I would have a new draft to write. As October wore on, though, I knew I needed to do this. NaNoWriMo has served me well as a catapult to get back into writing during a slump in the past, so I’m hoping that will happen again.
As is my tradition, I started writing right at midnight to get a jump start on the month. Last year, my daughter, then 10 years old, decided to start writing with me part way through the month. This year, she’s starting from the beginning and even wanted to stay up until midnight to get a few sprints in, so we did two 10-minute sprints together, and then she went to bed. I did one more 15-minute sprint myself and ended the midnight sprint with 1786 words. Then this evening, another 15-minute sprint got me to my day 1 total.
I often set my daily goal higher than the normal minimum, because it’s important to me that I finish the draft of the novel before the motivation of the month disappears. I’m making a very uncertain guess that this draft will be around 75k words, so my daily goal is 2500 words. It’s a delicate balance, trying to come to the end of the draft right at the end of the month, but I’ll re-evaluate halfway through the month or so and raise or lower the word count if/as necessary.
The Story: This is the first year in a while that I haven’t had a brand new story to draft for my series. I’ve already got the first drafts done for the next 6 books in the series and am nowhere near prepared to try to write anything that comes after that. However, after writing most of the first draft for book #5 in November 2015, I later tore the outline apart and rebuilt it, making that first draft almost completely obsolete. So with that new outline already done and being different enough from the first draft that I feel confident rewriting it, instead of revising it, I decided to write that this month. It’s technically rebelling, because it’s not a brand new work of fiction, but I can live with that.
One of the biggest changes I’m making is to change which character is the main character. It was always intended to be Jonathan, a blade smith who was introduced in the first book in the series, Pithea, but who took a back seat when I accidentally let the first book’s MC, Missy, take over. I’m looking forward to spending more time with Jonathan, though, who is a character I love, but hasn’t gotten much “screen time” so far in the completed books.
Total word count: 2577
For almost as long as I’ve been blogging about how NaNo is going all through the month of November, I’ve been sharing each day’s NaNoToon. Though there are no longer new NaNoToons, rather than give up that tradition, I’m going back through them, starting last year with the first year there was a storyline through the month. So for today, if you want to join me, check out the NaNoToon from November 1, 2011! (Though the story for that year actually started over 2 weeks before November, so if you want the full effect, start here.) And in honor of November 1st, because it is absolutely not NaNoWriMo without the NaNoMusical, here is episode 1!
Still feeling less than stellar today, I did a lot of reading, playing, watching, and just generally nothing productive today. But I kept in the back of my mind that I needed to write, knowing that it wouldn’t take me long to finish the draft. I finally got to it at around 9:30 pm and took about 20 minutes to write the final scene. And I broke 75k words, which amazingly enough was my estimate of word count for this draft!
The Story: The final scene jumped ahead several years from the rest of the story. Part of me wonders if the scene is worth including in this book, but I like how it provides this mystery for the reader, since it shows the villain in a completely unknown place. It’s a teaser for a future story arc, but I’ll still have to decide whether to keep it or not.
FINAL word count: 75,082
Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2009! The final episode of the NaNoMusical is perfect for the final day of NaNo. Be sure to watch the wrap-up!
We kept the writing time short today, just a couple of sprints, partly because I’m close to the end of the book, and partly because our whole family just feels crummy right now. At least I was healthy most of the month, which allowed for another great NaNo!
The Story: I got a little too…technical, and also very dark, with the explanation about what the villain gets up to in this book. I really didn’t like it, and probably won’t use any of it. I’m not sure, then, if the best thing to do is to continue to be vague about what she’s doing, or if there’s a way I can just make it sound better. And less dark, because I don’t want to suddenly go down that rabbit hole when the rest of this series is, at least generally, not quite so dark.
I have one scene left, and frankly, I can’t see how it will be very long. Tomorrow will probably be a very short last day of NaNo, unless I’m feeling much better and feel like rewriting some of the scenes from the beginning (an idea I held in reserve in case the draft came up too short and I needed more to write about to finish out the month), because I realized after I wrote them that they were from the wrong character’s POV. But we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
I had to spend some time today doing last-minute changes and formatting work on Outcast, because it’s release date is Tuesday. So my daughter went on writing without me and reached her YWP goal of 20,000 words! But she still did a couple of sprints with me later, which gave me my words for the day.
The Story: Today was a meeting between this book’s villain and a future book’s villain, which was interesting. Though I think the conversation was a bit too calm and civil. Not that it can’t be calm, it just didn’t seem in-character for the current book’s villain, so I’ll have to work on that in editing.
I stopped writing when I moved onto a new scene, because I only have 2 scenes left in the draft. Neither of them do I anticipate to be any longer than 2500 words, so it seems that the best way to reach the end of the draft right at the end of the month is to write one of those scenes tomorrow and one on Monday.
My whole family (that currently reside in the house) was ready for a day of laziness today, and I almost didn’t want to write. But that was all the more reason to insist that I get some words in. I shared with my 10-year-old daughter, who’s done much of this year’s NaNo alongside me, that days like this I like to do a stretch of writing, then take a break for something more lazy like reading or watching a show, then do another stretch of writing. So we did that, and a couple of sessions of writing produced a daily count I was happy with.
The Story: I’m quite pleased with how I powered through the section that I was concerned about slowing me down. Not that I love what I wrote, but that I got through it quickly and moved on to something a little less difficult to write. A major villain of the series is setting herself up in the position that allows her to wreak major havoc on the rest of the country. The scene coming next should be a lot easier to write, and then there are only 2 more planned scenes until the end of the draft!
A Journey of Words 