Words/Time:  1 hour, 27 minutes doing preliminary work for the new outline of “Vin.”

It’s kind of like deja vu, really. I figured I’d start this task by reading through the entire first draft of the book, which was written in November of 2017 for NaNoWriMo. But somehow, I managed to forget that I hadn’t touched this after the month ended, so it’s still in what I call “NaNo-form.”

Sometimes I’ll spend the first few weeks after November ends doing a quick clean-up of what I wrote–mostly removing things I marked as NaNo fodder and at least doing a quick spell check. This is usually better to do while the story is still fresh, and then it’s good to let it sit for some time. I didn’t do that after NaNo in 2017. Or apparently after NaNo in 2015, because this exact same thing happened when I started on #3 in my long-term writing goals list, when I wanted to start out by reading through the first draft of “The Seeger Book.”

So just like then, I started with a spell-check through the whole story today. That took almost the entire amount of time I worked. Tomorrow, I’ll start reading through the entire story, removing the NaNo fodder as I read.

Unlike with “The Seeger Book,” though, I’m really looking forward to reading through this draft. In the time since I’ve gotten back into my writing again, any time I needed to open up the draft of “Vin” to remind myself of something I wrote there, I ended up getting caught up in reading more than I needed to. Unfortunately, it’s not a solid story, just…fun scenes with some of my favorite characters. So it’s not good enough to stay like it is, but still fun for me to read, at least.

I am pleasantly surprised to be able to say that I did complete the goal I set for Camp NaNoWriMo this month. The goal was to average 30 minutes of writing work per day. It was dicey for a while, considering how many days I skipped, but I finished today, and even went 20 minutes past. It helps that the work was easy on the brain (spell-checking). It also probably helps to be starting with a fresh story, after spending so long on the last goal.

Words/Time:  1 hour, 3 minutes finishing the new outline of “The Seeger Book.”

This was a hard-fought task, let me just say. Not only did I go through some intensely difficult times with work that led me to take massive amounts of days off while working on this outline, it was also a very difficult story to pin down.

I am really happy with the way the outline has shaped up, including a small-but-exciting idea that came out of nowhere while outlining the climax. I think it’s going to be a fairly complicated story to draft, but on the other hand…maybe I worked out the complications during outlining.

So that finishes #3 on my list of long-term writing goals. Tomorrow, I will start on #4.

1. Outline “Outcast” – Time spent: 12 days

2. Outline “Unexpectedly” – Time spent: 7 days

3. Re-outline “The Seeger Book” – Time spent: 26 days

4. Re-outline “Vin” – I wrote the first draft of this for NaNoWriMo in 2017. I spent the month before first realizing that this was the story to write that year, then figuring out what on earth this story was going to be about, exactly. I went back and forth on who the protagonist was, who the main character was, and most of all, learning the true motivations behind the title character. In the end, I wrote 69,878 words, but a good majority of it was just the characters telling each other stories about what happened in the past to get them to this place. It was fun and easy for word count, but not exactly a great plot. The plot was weak to start with though, so it needs some more work.

5. Re-outline “Protector”

After how sporadic my writing was this month, and how far behind par for Camp NaNoWriMo I was at one point, I am really surprised that I am only one solid hour (and a few minutes) away from winning. Unless something crazy happens tomorrow, I think I’ll just manage to pull it off.