NaNoWriMo: Week Three

Victory!

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I’m focusing on finishing the first draft of my work in progress, tentatively titled Technomancer. I’ve shared some of the character background and opening chapters of the work here as well.

This week, I reached my goal of 50,000 words in the month, reaching 50,091 on Nov 20th.

I’m writing earlier in the day, with most of my writing between 8:00 and 9:00 AM.My peak day is still a Saturday with 6,099 words written. I’m averaging 2,529 words per day.

The novel is not yet “complete” in first draft form, since I have a few threads to tie of in the epilogue portion of the book, but it is very close. Overall word count is currently 94,523 and one goal was to keep it around 100k words or less.

I will post the final chapter of the first part of the book as a WIP: posting next Monday, and hope to have the first revision on the draft completed before the end of the year.

A few things I’ve learned during this 20-day journey:

Having a regular writing cadence helps me stay focused on moving the story forward. Yes, I wanted to keep pace on the goal I set to be done this week, but more importantly, I was able to write in the mornings and plan the next installment as I got on with life in the afternoons.The structure of the challenge also forced me to embrace the idea of starting before I was ready and stopping before I was done. Continuing to develop this habit and practice is something I’ll focus on going forward.I had a rough outline that helped guide me, but wish I had more fully plotted out the different character arcs I wanted. I’ll be revisiting each of those in the editing process.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I encourage anyone thinking of writing a novel to jump into next years’ challenge, or just do it and start now. Set a goal and start writing!

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