Ninety-One Days Down, Nine to Go

Photo credit: Mariya on Pixabay

I’m in the final days of this challenge. I’ve written at least one thousand words of my new novel every day, all through April, all through May, all through June. Now, on the cusp of July, the finish line is in sight.

I think that this time, I’ll be ready to pause the word count.

It’s not that there isn’t still a lot to write. If I wanted to, I could probably go for at least another three weeks and not run out of material. But I’m tired. I need a break. Besides, rather than simply keep writing, I’m thinking I need to spend time going through what I’ve written, piecing it together to figure out where the holes are. So I’ve promised myself that for the next nine days, I’ll continue to write what I think needs to be written, and I’ll keep making notes as other pieces come to mind. After July 9—Day 100—I’ll get out the whiteboard and chart what I have so I know what I need to complete Draft #1, and then I’ll fill in those gaps.

I haven’t decided what form my writing time will take once Draft #1 is finished. All I know is that I don’t want to move away from the daily practice. I’ve found it enormously valuable, more so than I could ever have dreamed, and I want to keep it up. I think I finally understand why musicians and pretty much everybody else who’s trying to develop a skill subscribes to the idea of daily practice, even if they aren’t doing precisely the same thing every day. (For the record: I was always terrible at keeping up daily practice when I was studying music, whether it was violin, piano, or voice. If I practiced three times a week, it was a good week.) I could go back to my hour a day regime, the one I followed when I was editing State v. Claus, except that this is even bigger than I’ve been doing. (Spoiler: on most days, writing 1,000 first-draft words takes 30-45 minutes, tops.)

There’s a part of me that’s scared that if I stop writing every day, I’ll lose my momentum and the story will fade from my imagination. I want to believe that a hundred consecutive days of writing will protect it, but I’m not certain. As always, Draft #1 is serviceable, barely more than a script where someone says X, someone else nods, a third person shakes their head and says Y. There’s so much I still need to do with this book—characters and motivations to explore, language to edit and enhance, themes to develop, images and symbols to unearth or weave in. I’m afraid to take my hands off the wheel for fear the story will stall out.

So here’s the plan. I’ll continue to write at least 1,000 words every day for the next nine days. Then, I’ll evaluate what I have so I know what needs to happen next. And I’ll trust that the work I’ve done for 100 days is enough to keep the story going.