Progress: 48,471 words, Five Chapters (All first or second draft)

 

The word count is rising, but the chapter count remains the same. My recent novel updates have been about writing flashbacks, and I am only one more away from getting out of the past. Each flashback scene goes into a chapter which is otherwise forward movement in the story. While some of these scenes are for later chapters, I’m only counting full chapters into the above stats when I’ve completed all scenes within that chapter.

The good news is, I am officially halfway through my novel!

To give me a bit of a boost I’ve joined CampNaNoWriMo. This is an offshoot of NaNoWriMo which is National Novel Writing Month. That takes place every November and has been going a few years now. The idea is for writers to commit to completing a huge amount of work, essentially writing a novel in the constraint of one month. CampNaNo is for July instead of November, and the suggested word count is 50,000.

I rejected the idea of participating at first. I have a steady pace for my writing now and don’t want to get burned out by pushing myself that hard. To finish 50k I would have to go from 500 words a day to almost 1700, and on a good day I only get to about 800. A big part of these events though is having discussions with other writers and exchanging advice and encouragement. To take advantage of that I decided to just alter the plan. My new target is 600 words a day. It’s more of a nudge than a push, but I’m less likely to lose my balance with a nudge.

These big writing months are ideal for completing first drafts of a new novel. You are meant to write without editing, just keep moving forward and get the story out there. I lack that skill currently. I spend a good portion of time going back over areas of my first draft now while I write it. The longer I work on this project I see that as a huge pitfall toward completion, and I am working on avoiding it. There will be many edits later, I know.

I already have an idea for a second novel, and while I took a moment to get the story summary down, I swore not to let it distract me from my current goal. I am looking forward to writing it though and, when NaNoWriMo rolls around in November, I think I’m going to take a crack at writing the first draft of the new novel then. Not everyone can do so much writing consistently for that long, and there are plenty of people that fail.

The phrase “certifiably insane” comes to mind. Do crazy people really get a certificate?  I hope the doctors hold onto it for them, or it will likely get eaten. That, or they’ll try and write a novel on it in a month. Now imagine what they’ll use for ink.

Do you have a novel in the works? Are you participating in CampNaNo? I’d love to connect with you or hear about your story.

Be sure to Subscribe and follow.

Thanks for reading.