Week Two

Well I'm about halfway through week two of NaNoWriMo and I'd say my freak-out level is about a 7.

It's just... So. Many. Words. Also, everyday! Everyday writing, no breaks, no days off, unless you write extra ahead of time or write later to catch up, which sounds scary, and I don't want to be doing that.

I know a lot of people are writing like crazy and are well ahead of schedule, but I am totally thrilled to just be keeping up. I'm at 17K words right now, which feels great, but I need to hit 18333 today, so there's still a good deal of writing in my very immediate future.

Wild to think that I'll be breaking 20K before the weekend. The last time I brought a novel to 20K was Temper, in February. It's nice to be drafting again.

That being said, holy crap this manuscript is going to need a ton of work come revision time.

For starters, I'm at 17K and I'm already about halfway through my outline, meaning my novel might end much sooner than expected. I was figuring around 70K. It's now looking more like, um, 40K. Which is even below the NaNoWriMo goal of 50K.

Now if the novel is complete at 40K words, great, it's a complete draft, which is an awesome thing to have. But I will still be a little sad that I didn't "win" NaNoWriMo. I do think after revisions the story will be closer to 50-60K, because I have a handful of scenes I need to add to the beginning chapters, but for now I'm just trying to get the thing out of my head.

Anyway, my plan is simply to write the 1.7K words/day and if I finish early, I'll go back to the beginning and try to add some scenes before the month is over. The biggest downside to this is that it might feel too revision-y for me and then my editing brain will take over and I'll do nothing but rewrite the first chapter eleven times.

But I guess we'll see.

How are your NaNoWriMos coming along?
How much of your projects are you sharing?

I'm actually being pretty secretive about mine. I will say this: It's young adult fantasy. The main character is a 17-year-old girl named Olivia, and she's trying to solve her best friend's murder. And, if you're especially curious, I put up an excerpt from the first page on my NaNoWriMo profile. (Just keep in mind this is not super polished!)

Happy NaNo-ing!

Word Sprints

I've been quite productive tonight. I did some self-monitored word sprints, timed writing sessions of thirty minutes with breaks in between.

First sprint I wrote 711 words.

Second sprint I wrote 817 words.

Third sprint I wrote 973 words.

A total of 2501 in about two hours, with a decent chuck of time spent feeding my internet addiction by allowing myself to update twitter and check for new blogs. Not bad.

Of course, this strange productivity decides to show up just before midnight on my second day off when I have work very early in the morning. Wonderful.

I've realized that writing sprints work quite well for me, but only when I'm really, really determined and really ready to sprint. It's like a mind state I need to motivate myself into. A thirty minute block of writing like crazy. If I can mentally prepare myself for it, then I can write great amounts. My fingers never pause. I don't stop to re-read and correct. It's a very good way to get words on the page, which after all is the main point of NaNoWriMo.

My current word count is at 7834, so I only need about 500 words by the end of today (the 5th) to be right on schedule. Some of y'all are doing great-- already decently past 10K words, and a few WriMo friends are in the 20-30-40K range. At least one or two insane people have already "won" NaNoWriMo with 50K words.

To which I say:

...


[Shocked silence. Also, some choice words I won't repeat because I try to keep my blog PG-13.]

For now, I'm going to take another break and spend some time with my boyfriend. I might do another word sprint tonight to push past 8K, but I'll probably wait until after work tomorrow evening.

Have you ever tried timed word sprints?
Do they work well for you?

Decision

I've decided on one novel to focus on.

Yeah, that was fast.

I ended up not starting the high fantasy idea. It's a great world, and I plan to write the story someday, but I started the YA fantasy at midnight and it just pulled me in. I ended day one a little ahead of schedule, with almost 2K words.

I work today (Tuesday) until about 5 PM, but then I have the whole night and the next two days off to write write write.

If you're NaNo-ing, you can find my profile here. Feel free to add me!

Hope you writing projects are going well, NaNo or not.