Talk about progress…

My first entry on this blog was July 31, 2008.  At that time, I had written 30,141 words.  Today, I’ve opened up my novel and find I’m at 80,143 words.  That’s 50,002 words in the span of 3 1/2 months (113 days to be exact).  It seems like a ton of work.  It seems like it’s hard and arduous to do.  You look at a number like 50,002 words and say, “whew, that’s a bunch” (ignoring you Na”No”ers who are trying to get to the 50,000 word mark in a month).  In reality, that 50,002 words reflects a relaxed pace — it only took an average off 442.5 words each day to get there.

Yes there have been slow days where you only get a couple hundred words out in the span of a couple of hours, and yes those days are frustrating.  There are also good days, where 1,000 words seem to leave your fingers in the span of one hour and you’re so into it you keep chugging through and end up with a very accomplished day.

There are days that you are sick.  There are days work drains you, and you’re stuck in traffic for hours trying to get home.  There’s the game that you just have to watch.  Occasionally, you’re obligated to visit family.  The dog ate something it found on the floor and is throwing up everywhere, so you have to follow it around with a mop and bucket.

Guess what — those things happen to everybody.  They happen to me, to you, to the random guy you don’t know.  And it’s okay.  There are days you literally can’t write (can’t get to a computer, broke all your fingers, etc…).  There are days you really don’t feel like writing.  You have to differentiate between the two.  On days you can’t write, you don’t write.  On days you don’t feel like writing, too bad.  Do it.  You’ll thank yourself in a few months when you have a completed draft.

Half a step forward, half a step back.

Yesterday, I only wrote 500 words, about half of what I would have liked.  It put me to just over 79,500, so still on pace to finish by the end of the year, but a little behind where I would have liked to have been.  The cold hit me bad yesterday and my brain didn’t want to work.  So 500 words, when my brain is fighting me, is pretty good.

Unfortunately, as I looked at what I wrote today, I had to scrap about 400 words of it, because it really didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of story.  So instead of being about 500 words behind, I’m now 900 words behind.  My brain has cleared up some, and it’s willing to work right now, so I’m going to start catching up.  I figure 1,200 words per day for the next four days will put me right back where I want to be.

It’s going to feel good, realllllllll good, when this draft is done.

Fighting on multiple fronts

Things have been slow on the posting front, but it’s okay.  I’ve been a bit under the weather — there’s a cold going around, and of course I got hit with it.  Together with getting back into the whole swing of work (it’s amazing how taking just under a week off really throws you off), it’s been a long couple of days.  That being said, I’ve still been productive on the writing front.  I was a little behind after the weekend — only 76,000 words, when I was hoping to be 78,000.  I hit 78,000 yesterday, and should make it to 79,000 tonight.

I’m still on pace to finish by December 31st, even accounting for the holidays.  In fact, if I can keep up the pace of the last few days (though I’m not necessarily expecting to), I’ll be finished with the first draft before Christmas.  Either way, New Years should be punctuated with cigars and scotch.

To top it off, my preparations for the second draft are coming along better than expected.  My second draft will consist of major revisions only (in other words, adding or removing wholesale passages).  As I start to move toward wrapping things up, I’m developing a list of things that need to be added, which will make the first step of the revision process faster.  Note that I will be posting discussions about my take on the revision process when I get to it.

Getting there….

It’s been an up and down week of writing.  As I expected last week, I just got to 70,000 words (in fact, I didn’t get there until Sunday).  What I didn’t expect (or really think about) was that Sunday and Monday were going to be slow days as well.  Since I was only working on Monday, I had a couple of projects that had to be finished, so I ended up spending some time on Sunday working on them, and didn’t get out of work until late on Monday.  Add to that the time I spent helping my roommate pick up his new car from out of state, as well as a nice sit down dinner, and I ended up being very unproductive (on the writing my novel front) on Monday.

Tuesday wasn’t horrible — I got in a little bit of writing — but most of the day was spent traveling and visiting some family members.  Again, not the most productive day.  Yesterday, on the other hand, was a pretty productive day.  I got in about 1,000 words — decent for one writing session, though not as much as I would’ve liked.

Today, however, was a great day.  I got in over 2,000 words.  My morning session and my evening session were both very productive.  I’m just shy of 74,000 words, and will hit that by lunchtime tomorrow.  With a couple more days to get some good work done, I’m hoping to go back to work on Monday with ~78,000 words under my belt and some serious momentum to push me through the next six weeks until completion of the first draft.

So how’s everyone else doing?  Are you finding that time goblins are stealing your chances to write, or are you vanquishing the foul demons and persevering?

Na”No”WriMo

For those of you who have never read a writing blog, or who have simply had their heads in the proverbial sand recently, I would like to note that today is the seventh day of Na”No”WriMo, or National “Novel” Writing Month.

Now, as many of you know, this event is basically an event where the participants are encouraged to write 50,000 words in one month.  I have two comments about it, one positive and one negative (although I’ll leave the bashing to those slightly more emphatic about it like Ken Kiser).

First, I want to explain why the “No” is in quotes.  The goal of this event is to write 50,000 words.  That is not a novel.  It may be a novella, but in reality a novella generally tops out at 40,000 words.  This leaves the end result of November somewhere in between a novella and a novel, which is generally somewhere in the 80,000 word minimum range.  So in reality, you end up with an overly long novella, or a way too short novel.

Second, I want to respond to the criticism that Na__WriMo encourages people to write crap.  Ken has been particularly derisive about this (not to single you out or anything ).  To get to the 50,000 word mark, you have to write 1,667 words/day.  While this is more than most “recreational” writers do (and by recreational, I really mean writers that are doing this in addition to a day job), and more than some professional writers do, it’s not within the realm of the impossible.

I’ve had days where I’ve written as many as 2,000 words (give or take a couple), and I don’t think that they came out crappy.  To those people who say that it’s too fast a pace, I ask this question: what makes your pace more reasonable?  If more words/day = crappier writing, wouldn’t you best be served by writing less than 100 words per day?  Less than 10?  Maybe you should spend 2 hours per day coming up with the one word for the day?

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts about it as the days go on, but these were a couple of things that were on my mind right now.

Caught Up

I’ve managed to catch up to where I would’ve been had I not experienced the technical difficulties a couple weeks back.  I’m a little shy of 70,000 words, but I’ll make that by the end of next week, leaving me with 40,000 words and 7 weeks to complete the first draft.  At that pace, I would need about 952 words/day to finish on time, assuming 6 days/week of writing.

This next week may be a little slow — I have several long days of work coming up due to election day — but that’s already been anticipated and why I only expect to crank out a few thousand words over that span.  The following week, I have four days off with no real plans other than to write, and in addition to the regularly scheduled holidays I have a floating holiday that has to be used by the end of the year, and several more vacation days that I could use if I wanted to (and will use if I find I need to in order to finish the draft on time).  The days off have higher writing targets — I generally want to get 1,500+ words done on those days, because I often split my writing into two sessions — one in either the morning or afternoon and one in the evening.  I basically count it as two separate days of writing, since the intent of the day is to do writing, and then of course I have my regularly scheduled writing session at night.  Those days off will lessen the burden on the rest of the days, but even 952 words/night is manageable.

I expect that I will be done with the first draft by December 31st, and plan on ringing in the New Year with a celebration of that completion (I feel that scotch and stokes will be appropriate).