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!