Just in case you were wondering, still out here, writing away when I have the free time. I’m at about 23k words in the novel right now. The goal remains at 100k by mid-March (currently, that averages to a minimum of 1154 words a day between now and my goal date), though realistically, if the story ends at 89k, that’s fine, if it doesn’t end until 189k, that’s fine. Work days I tend to average about 700-1000 words, and on days off 2500 words (oddly enough, though, both those word counts are written in the same amount of time, but the former involves typing while on a moving passenger van).
And, this is only the first rough draft. Once this is done, I will attempt to follow my usual routine with shorts, which is to print it out and start marking it up, noting disjoints in the story, areas that need more work, and a little grammar correctiveness. The comes second draft, where I attempt to incorporate all of those changes. Then I tend to do a rinse and repeat, hopefully with fewer modifications. And yes, I actually have a third draft phase, where I go through and attempt to trim the story back down to what’s necessary to tell the tale, no less and no more. So my goal of 100k words by mid March for the first draft is completely arbitrary.
The painful part is the negative writing. I use yWriter, which I’ve blogged about before, and the latest release of v5 have been awesome (yay Simon!). In the status bar at the bottom of the screen, there is a running tally of the total number of words in your novel, and just to the right of that, the words you’ve added today.
Problem is, lately I’ve had two occasions where I’ve had to go back and trash a scene, which means at the end of the day my word count has only been positive 15 or 20, despite having just written 2000+ words for the day! I like that yWriter does this, but at the same, damn depressing to know you’ve just beaten your daily word count goal, but when all is said and done you’ve barely itched forward on the larger progress tracker. And yes, when you mark that scene unused, you get to spend the whole day with your words added for the day at a negative number.
Bah. Here I am, a double birthday party this afternoon, cakes to pick up, party favors to help with, and 2500 words to write before Stargate Atlantis’ final episode tonight. This is why I never post to the blog – too much else to do! 🙂
*(and yes, spider, tsunam, I owe you both responses from before #nanowrimo ended still).
No worries, I have patience, I think? *Tries to remember the question*
Anyhow, good luck with the continued writing!