Today marks the official halfway point for NaNoWriMo. The challenges lasts for the month of November and November 15 is halfway through the month. Ideally, if you are keeping to pace, you should be at about 25,000 words by the end of the day today. For the 15th consecutive day I have exceeded both the NaNoWriMo suggested pace and my own target. I wrote Chapter 16 this morning, the first chapter in Part 2 of the novel. I got through 2,327 words in just an hour and a half, which is pretty remarkable for me. It brings my 15-day total to 37,107 words, more than 12,000 word ahead of NaNoWriMo pace.
This morning’s chapter laid out some of the problems and challenges that will plague the characters over the course of the next 2 years–which is the duration of time covered by Part 2 of the novel There is an interesting progression here that I didn’t really notice until this morning. Part 1 covers a period of time of roughly 2 weeks; part 2 a period of roughly 2 years; and Part 3 covers a period of about 2 decades. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds stylistically. There is a lot more going on in Part 2 than Part 1, but I’m trying to weave these things together in an interesting way. I’ve got Chapters 16-19 outlined in detail and I hope to fill in the detail on Chapters 20-30 this evening. Than it is just a matter of hitting about a chapter a day for the next 14 days.
At this point, it’s looking like I’ll hit 50,000 words on the morning of November 20, which is this coming Sunday. That’s perfect, really, since I’ll be heading up to New York later that morning to attend a SFWA event on Monday. I’m hoping to still get my writing in on Sunday and Monday, if only to keep my forward momentum. But if I don’t I’m not going to stress over it.
I’m on pace to finish up the month of November at somewhere around 74,000 words. That leaves only about 16,000 words to finish up in December and at this point, it is looking more and more like I will have a completed first draft by December 7 or so. I’m beginning to worry about Part 3 just a little because of the time span it covers, and how to convey this timespan in the course of the narrative, but I’m still working on ideas and I have a few which might work. In the meantime, I’m trying to keep my focus on the task at hand, and I’m fairly pleased with what I got down this morning.
Here are the stats for today, the official halfway point:
RSS - Posts