National Novel Writing Month, Conclusion

So here we are at the end. In total, I wrote 76,381 words. Seriously. Of those, just over eighteen thousand were written yesterday and the day before; Monday was the most I’ve ever written in a single day, and Tuesday wasn’t far behind. The book itself is coming along well, though nowhere near done. Most of those eighteen thousand words were, unfortunately, spent on an event that I assumed would take a single chapter, but I guess that's what I get for hilariously poor outlining.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but the word count’s going to lead to yet another pile of books to join the vast number that are already coming my way for the holidays. For every five thousand words after 50k, I didn’t think I’d make it to the next landmark. So I set prizes of sorts. If you make sixty thousand, I told myself, you can have Grin of the Dark, say. But I just kept making it, and that’s where the problems come in. Though I guess it’s a nice problem to have.

This is, in case you were growing worried, the last time I’ll discuss my own writing until, I guess, NaNo next year short of some sort of publication related miracle.

So, anyone else out there got a NaNo success story?

National Novel Writing Month, Week Four

Victory – or, at least, official victory – has been achieved. I’m currently at 54,155 words at the moment, though that’s before writing today. My overall NaNo goal is 60k, which looks extremely manageable from here. I think I might’ve had more this week if I hadn’t gone insane and decided to write a short story, too, but whatever. Only a few days left, now.

I spent the last hour or two hammering this into something resembling chapters and chronology, so I think it's time I added some new words.

National Novel Writing Month, Week Three

So now we’re at the point when this has gotten a bit…difficult. Not that I’m falling behind, mind you. The target for the day seems to be 33,334 words, while I’m comfortably sitting at 42,513. That being said, I’m now in the midst of that fun part where all the elements that seemed so intuitive before have stopped making any kind of sense. I’ve realized, for instance, that one of my main characters now has nothing to do between now and the climax of the book. Hmm. Whoops. Still, 50k’s not far away, and the ending of the book is only another few tens of thousands of words away, or something like that. Practically there already.

And now I’m going to go back to killing minor characters like there’s a price on their head, if you fellows don’t mind. I’ll turn up again tomorrow, though, to give you all a rather less narcissistic post.

National Novel Writing Month, Week Two

Here we are, halfway through NaNo. The suggested word count at this point is 25k...which means that, at 33,393 words, I'm way ahead. Still going well on the general writing front, though a tad more erratic than the first week, with some days being 5k marathons and others struggling for a thousand words. The story's coming together fairly nicely, though I think I'm closer to a quarter of the way through than half. Ah well, what's an epic fantasy (especially an amateur one) without absurd amounts of bloat, eh?

I think I'll go try and hit 35k tonight. After finishing up your review for tomorrow, of course.

National Novel Writing Month, Week One

We’re six days into National Novel Writing Month right now, and I’ve got 16,217 words down, about six thousand ahead of the curve. Not too shabby, and I get to seem cool and competent (or at the least nerdy and obsessive) rather than pathetic. The actual book’s coming along decently, though, in typical Epic Fantasy fashion, it sprouted a few extra limbs and unwieldy new point of views.

Off to go write, now…

[I know I said I was doing this on Saturday, but I’m still sort of working out what day it fits best at.]

National Novel Writing Month

It’s November, and, for those of you who don’t know, that means it’s time for National Novel Writing Month, where the moderately insane try and write fifty thousand words or more in thirty days or less. I participated last year and won, though it was more of a word count win than I completed novel win, and I’m at it again.

I don’t want this blog to be self promotional in nature, so I’m not going to be posting huge writing samples or anything like that. The one thing that I will do is, every Saturday, make a NaNo post, not because I think people are particularly interested in my success, but rather because the thought of publicly announcing my failure – which, if I must, I shall do – is liable to keep me on track. This post will not count for either the week’s review or its other content, whatever that may be, and you’re free to ignore it if you couldn’t care less. If you’re participating, though, feel free to check up with your own word counts and perhaps embarrass yourself to new heights.

But how does this affect you, readers of this (mighty fine) blog for the rest of the week? Well, I’m hoping that it doesn’t, at least not significantly. Blogging is, unsurprisingly, a rather large time investment, and writing a minimum of 1667 words a day is the same. I have November’s content all mapped out – the standard reviews as well as an article or two that I think will be of interest – and don’t anticipate a problem there, but the percentage of books read this month that I review will probably be lower than average, as will my total books read.

Anyway, the standard Up and Coming post will be up tomorrow.