The Words: 1701 words today shortly before bedtime. It’s a good thing I realized yesterday that I don’t have a large enough lead to take more short days unless absolutely necessary, or I probably would have cut today short. I can’t really afford that, though, with holiday events coming up.
The Story: Because of trying to get the words out quickly tonight, today’s writing mostly consisted of a conversation between Garend and the person who brought him to Newland. She’s telling him a lot of things about his ancestry that he never knew (and that I didn’t know either).
The Words: 1726 words today in two 15-minute sprints with my 15-year-old daughter. It occurred to me today that I’m not even a full day’s word count ahead, which is both uncommon for me anymore and a little scary. I have to be careful about my short days from now on.
The Story: Garend and the person who brought him to Newland talked a bit about the future today, and Garend finally got a chance to rest and reflect. I think it’s time to start brainstorming some actual events to happen once Garend makes it over the metaphorical threshold into Newland, which I may just jump forward to in the next day or two. Even I’m getting bored by what I’m writing.
The Words: 1824 words today. Sundays are pretty full for us lately with church in the morning, Christmas choir practice in the afternoon, and grocery shopping with my husband while our daughter is at youth group in the evening. I did a 10-minute sprint in the short window of time I had in the afternoon and got around 800 words. Then this evening, I used the Sprinter site and just wrote until I’d gotten another 1000 words.
The Story: Garend’s evaluation is over, but things aren’t quite looking up yet. He’s finally made it within the boundaries of Newland, but he’s still not allowed to see or know anything until the results come back on his evaluation. I have no actual book plans for any of what I’m writing yet, but if I ever decided to use any of this in a future book, I’d really have to pare it down. It’s interesting for me to be exploring this process, but overall pretty boring stuff.
The Words: 800 words total for the day in a 15-minute sprint with my daughter shortly before I needed to head to bed to be up early. I really thought I’d have more time to write today, but it just didn’t work out. (I’m posting this for the 15th a week later because apparently, when I tried to post it on the 15th, I instead just edited the post for the 14th instead of copying it to make a new post. So I have restored the post from the 14th and have made this its own post.)
The Story: Garend has been released from his evaluation and sent to Newland, but only to a lodging building pending his evaluation being cleared by the powers that be. He won’t be alone, but he also still may not get the answers he’s looking for just yet.
The Words: 1959 words total for the day in 2 15-minute sprints using the Sprinter site. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to hit par today due to having a busy evening, so I did one sprint earlier in the day and thought I might have to be happy with the 1020 words it got me. But fortunately I had more time in the evening than I expected and managed another sprint. And I hit the halfway point a day early!
The Story: Today brought an interesting discussion about what Garend’s future might look like in Newland. And the realization that he is still torn about leaving Pithea and his friends there behind. But the allure of this new place is just too great to ignore.
The Words: 2008 words total for the day, in a sort of repeat of yesterday. I knew I’d be gone in the evening again and that when I got home, I’d probably be doing work around the house until it was time to go to bed. So I carved out 30 minutes in the afternoon and wrote. I thought yesterday’s 1800 words might be a record for a 30-minute sprint for me, but I was really surprised to see today’s count. I didn’t feel like I was typing any faster, so the difference might have been that today I wrote on my computer, while yesterday I wrote on my Freewrite Alpha at the table, which is higher than the keyboard tray on my desk. It’s not super comfortable to write there, plus it’s a smaller keyboard, so I think I type slower overall on the Alpha. Or maybe the words just really flowed today.
The Story: Garend had to incriminate himself by revealing that he’d shared a secret he’d been told not to share with Lex, his mom, and a third character in “Power,” the book I’m nearing publication with. His fears about destroying their lives is finally put to rest, and hopefully (for both our sakes) he’ll be able to move on from this evaluation soon. When my husband suggested showing Garend in Newland because of his story arc in “Power,” I’ll be he expected Garend to actually make it to Newland.
Total word count: 23,261
If the week 2 blahs have got you down (or even if they don’t), it’s a good time to check out the 3rd episode of the NaNoMusical!
The Words: 1877 words total for the day, all written during one 30-minute sprint. I knew I’d be gone in the evening and that it would be difficult to sit down and write when I got home too, so my daughter and I set a timer for 30 minutes and wrote. This might be a record for a 30-minute sprint for me, but even if it’s not, it was definitely on the high end.
The Story: Yesterday I called this evaluation that Garend is going through stalling, because it was rehashing some events from a previous book, but today, it gave me a chance to explore what wasn’t seen. Most of what is being discussed here was just seen in the periphery in the other book, so here I’m looking at it more directly. It may or may not be giving me insight into the book I’m currently editing to hopefully publish soon.
The Words: 1140 words total for the day. I don’t like taking another short day already, but we had too much to get done around the house for me to have much time to write this evening. And that might continue to be the case the rest of this week. I’ll have to figure out a way to balance things. But I’m still above the line for where I should be at this time, so it’s not all bad.
The Story: Okay, so I’m kind of stalling again. The woman doing Garend’s evaluation is asking him questions about his life that allow him (and me) to tell stories from a previous book that probably don’t need to be re-hashed. But it’s giving me a chance to get to know Garend a little more myself. Just because he has a role in another book doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot more for me to know about him.
The Words: 1758 words total for the day. I did a couple of 15-minute sprints, which took me to around 1530 words, and I wrote for a few more minutes to hit part to end up at the total words I got for the day.
The Story: Garend is finally getting into his evaluation, and the woman in charge is a little…well, let’s just say that even I’m not sure what to make of her. Of course, that’s probably because she just popped into existence today and I’m getting to know her as I go, but that’s the fun of writing!
The Words: 607 words total for the day. I didn’t get to my writing time until after 10 pm tonight, so I did a quick 10-minute sprint to at least get some words in. Not too bad.
The Story: Not a whole lot happened in 600 words, but I did end today’s writing on the precipice of taking a huge step forward. So tomorrow’s writing should either be really interesting or really difficult.
A Journey of Words 