The last time I posted I had hit the 50,000 word mark in NaNoWriMo and was fast approaching the end of November with a fair old chunk of story left to write... The larks of a Christmas in retail and the recovery from Christmas in retail have kept me away from the blog, but now I've caught my breath back... I guess you're wondering if I succeeded?
At 10pm ish of 30th November I validated my word count at around 60,025 words, (and here I and the word count widget at the NaNoWriMo web site will have to agree to differ...) with at least 15,000 to 25,000 words left to write to complete the tale... and the Champagne remained unopened...
Although I'd 'won' I didn't feel like I'd really done it as I hadn't actually completed the novel in a month... I'd hit the word count, but not completed anything... And so I kept going. I kept the 1,667 words a day goal and kept up the pace, finishing 'From The Library Of Parker Prentis' on 12th December at a total of 87,470 words written in 42 days...
I was like nothing I've experienced before... That amount of wordage in such a short time and wholely focussed on moving forward, never looking back, never re-reading and never editing... It felt like a blank cheque for creativity, it felt like every excuse to not do something had been taken away and all that was left was the drive to put a world on the page.
So, what worked?
Well, the pep talks from NaNoWriMo made officially registering completely worth it, especially the ones from Chris Baty. Every time he sent a pep talk I felt like part of the community, I felt like a brother-in-arms, I felt like he could feel my pain on the bad days and share my triumph on the good. The last page of his NaNoWriMo support title, 'No Plot? No Problem!' (ISBN 9780811845052) genuinely brought tears to my eyes with its motivational, reach-for-the-stars joy...
The NaNoWriMo sites stat pages for your progress were incredibly motivational too, offering a graph with the ideal word count zooming up the middle. I swear the notion of falling below that word count curve made me break out into a cold sweat... Especially when right next to it, in cold hard black and white pixels were the number of words you needed to catch up to regain your ideal word count... Seriously, a cold sweat...
But best of all, and I can recommend this to anyone with a short term or long term goal; have a chart on the fridge and buy sticky gold stars... The boxed kit of 'No Plot? No Problem!' (ISBN 9780811854832) came with a month long chart with holes for daily word count and spaces to stick stars or sad faces for FAIL days. Of everything, this fridge display of daily fail or success, on display to anyone who comes into your house, helped me keep track of how well or badly I was doing and shamed me into writing even on the days when the new Assassins Creed game came out and the duvet called to me. I never thought yellow sad faces could chill the very blood in the veins...
And so, what now?
Well, it's been just over a month since I typed the last words of the first draft, eyes full of tears at leaving behind these characters, their world and the whole god-damned glorious experience of it all! And, well, it's probably time to consider editing... So, I'm going to read the whole thing through in the next week or so and then start editing and based on previous experiences, I know I should probably have a deadline and break the whole thing down into daily chunks. I find editing a slower and more complex exercise than writing, so I probably should give myself a couple of months to edit/re-write... It's 150-170 pages depending on formatting which at most brings me to the daily target of 2.83 pages a day...
Oh, here comes the cold sweat again...
Wish me luck and mighty Seshat, make it not shit... Please?
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