Saturday, November 14, 2009

Halfway Home

Passed the 25k mark on my NaNo novel yesterday and feel pretty darned good about it. Some of my "buddies" are cranking along too, with several of them already past the 50k mark! That's impressive as you know they had to throw in some 3, 4, and 5k days to get that far that fast. My "2k a Day" goal is plenty for me. I can get it done in a couple of hours and not burn myself out -- helps me approach each day's writing with enthusiasm as I know my brain won't pucker and I'll have plenty of time to do other stuff. You know, have a life and what not. Definitely going all tortoise in the word count race.

On a side note, there's a woman who does NaNo every year who regularly posts totals of 750k - 900k by the end of the month. Seriously. Now assuming she's telling the truth (if you cheat on this challenge the only person you're cheating is your own moronic self), that would mean she has to average at least 25 - 30k -- every single day of November! I cannot even imagine how that is physically possible as just reaching her daily count took me two full weeks of writing. The cynic in me wonders if any of her stuff is remotely coherent but if it is -- damn! I'm triply impressed.

Here's where I stand at just a little over 25k:
  • Very near the end of Chapter VII (c. 107 pages so far).
  • No longer worried I'll come up short. Now worried I'll go too far past the standard word count for a middle-grade novel (50-60k). This is a great worry to have as things like "too much" can be fixed in the edit.
  • Still pleasantly surprised with how smoothly it's going (more knocking on wooden head). I think having a fairly well thought out and detailed outline helped massively in this regard.
I'll touch base again at around 40k. See ya!

2 comments:

Mr. Walker said...

Congrats on hitting the halfway mark. 25K is a serious landmark in NaNoWorld. Keep going - you've paced yourself well and I have no doubt you'll cross the finish line.

Roger Eschbacher said...

Thanks for the encouraging words. I must confess that I'm really enjoying myself this round. Looks like you're making excellent progress, too!

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