NaNoWriMo

Word count: 42884 (+2338 from day 16).

Today’s writing session was much smoother again. The word count is still fairly low – I only wrote 2338 words – but at least I did not sit in front of the OpenOffice file torturing my brain for hours. Incidentally, my average is 2522.6 words per day.

My protagonists are out of harm’s way for now. They are about to receive a lot of information on what really happened; that will be tomorrow’s contribution to the novel, and will probably be one of the easiest sections to write.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-17

I am getting very close to 50,000 now. I can almost smell victory…

No real insights or “in other news” today. Sorry

Word count: 40546 (+1783 from day 15).

Another day of low output.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-16

I did not feel productive during the day at all, and spent way too much time procrastinating. It became much easier to write after I took a walk (in the rain, no less) in the evening, but I became very drowsy while I was writing. I vaguely remember going to bed…

I finished the scene I was working on this morning and reached a convenient break point. In total, it was only 1783. However, I did reach the 40,000 words milestone, and will definitely reward myself for that today.

Plot-wise, things are progressing in a fairly straight forward manner. I think I will have to change one aspect of what I wrote, however. We will see. My two main protagonists should find the main objective today or tomorrow (day 17 or 18, that is) and then it’s resolution time. As there are still several things I need to work out before “The End” I am absolutely sure 50,000 words will not suffice. As a rough guess, I will say 65,000. It will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction is.

Word count: 38763 (+1938 from day 14).

And so we reach the half-way point of NaNoWriMo. I made it to 38763 words today (yesterday, technically, as I am posting this on Sunday morning). Progress was slower than I had hoped. I am really feeling the chore of writing now. Words flow less easily. I have to pay more attention to steering towards the conclusion, and this limits my freedom. Instead of “this would be a fun obstacle to write about”, I find myself compelled to make sure than anything I add will get my protagonists closer to their goal. It does not mean they are having a free ride, of course. In fact when I left them today, they were in a life-threatening situation.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-15

As you can see, I slowed down a lot the past two days. This is a direct result from the lessened enthusiasm and fun. I still made the minimum quota on both days, and with over two weeks remaining I am still confident that I will make the 50k goal.

These past two days have re-affirmed my respect for writers. I was never part of the crowd who thinks writer have an easy life, but to actually be forced to write something on schedule, whether you like to or not, is a new experience for me.

Now I will take a break and reward myself with breakfast, before I tackle today’s writing session. I ended on a cliffhanger, so hopefully I will have more fun writing the narrow escape than I did getting my characters into the situation in the first place.

Word count: 36825 (+1667 from day 13).

My buddy Pedro made level 58 on World of Warcraft today, and so I ended up playing in the Outlands with him for quite a while. Yes, it was a lot of fun, but it also ate away too much time from writing.

Not that I really felt like writing today. I was tired and felt terribly ill, with headaches and the works.

As a consequence, I almost did not write, but I managed to do it. I only made the minimum word count, but that would be OK even if I was not way ahead of schedule. It does mess up my nice graph a little, but it would be silly to get upset about that.

I again went back to an earlier point and added some things in that I needed. It further shows that a decent outline would have saved me a lot of trouble, and did I mention that the whole thing will need an urgent rewrite / editing process – in December?

I am off to bed now, and hope that tomorrow will be more productive again.

Word count: 35158 (+3250 from day 12).

My two main protagonists are now on their way to finally tackling the main objective of the novel. And I do not mean that in a meta novel plot type sense; they are actually on their way to the location. The group of shelter survivors shattered today, as the character I do not like basically took control of it. What can I say, he is a jerk and an egomaniac.

I really did not want to write today. I had to force myself to do it. It was very awkward at first. Then I went back and expanded a scene much earlier by a short bit, and this laid the groundwork for a conflict I wanted to include today. After I had done that, those 3250 words came fairly quickly. Listening to good music helped too: I have several hours of DJ Risc’s now defunct Eve Radio show recorded. It’s really good music to listen to while working, in my opinion – not too aggressive, but energetic enough to keep you going, if that is the right term.

With 35000 (thirty five thousand!) words written in less than two weeks, I am starting to feel a little proud of myself. Sure, this ain’t gonna be a best-seller, and had I not promised at least one person that he could read it, I’d probably hide it forever. But it’s going to get done, and it’s going to get done in November, unless an Act of God prevents it.

But honestly… I don’t think it is so bad that I must be smitten with lightning.

Wordcount for 2008-11-13

Fairly smooth progression, eh?