Word count - Day 26 (part 2)

50,233 words down, NO WORDS TO GO.

At 10:20pm Monday night I passed the magical 50K mark.

All in all its gone a lot easier this year than any other year I've done this. I have to admit I've left my poor characters in a bad state at the 50K mark and I'll probably have to go back and rescue them at some point. In the meantime I'm going to take a day off then maybe write out till Friday when nano officially ends. Printing the 77 pages I've got so far is going to be fun.

Word count - Day 26

48,081 words down, 1,919 words to go.

With 9900 words written over the course of Fri, Sat and Sun night the word count had a significant jump this weekend. I attribute a lot of this to a concept called 'word wars' started by a few other people working on nanowrimo. Simply put, people log into an IRC channel to talk about their writing, offer each other support etc. Normally this would just be a distraction against actual writing, however, the word wars run for 20mins every half hour.

In the 20mins allotted everyone writes as much as they can. At the end of the 20mins everyone compares their word count for that period of time. There are no accolades for getting the highest number or recriminations for the lowest, it’s just an extra incentive to write solidly for 20min blocks at a time. On average I was hitting between 600-800 words in a twenty minute 'war' so the numbers add up pretty quickly (there were people producing over 1000 words in the same timeframe which was impressive to see).

I've said a couple of times that the story I'm writing doesn't really work and will be no where near finished at 50K words. At the moment I’m working towards a cliff-hanger type ending somewhere around the 50K mark (though it will probably be closer to 60K) and I’ll keep writing for the rest of the week. I think there's a good story in amongst pages of inconsistencies and forced sentences but it may take a little time to weed it out. At the moment December is gong to be a rest month, though I have a couple of ideas (including one that I hope to turn into a comic script submission) so may spend the time working on plots.

Tonight's target is the magical 50K mark. Assuming no natural disasters and that I remain conscious long enough after getting home, this should be eminently doable.

Word count - Day 23

38,183 words down, 11,817 words to go.

It's officially week 4. Actually I think it was officially week 4 yesterday, but the time zone and dates are a little confusing to fatigued mind. Either way, its the home stretch, so to speak.
It's been a different experience writing this year as opposed to previous nano's. Life has changed, I haven't written for a while, work if far more intrusive than it ever used to be. All that said I think the effort put into writing this year has been far more consistent and steady (at least that's what my graph on the nanowrimo site shows).
Would I attempt to continue writing 1667 words per day? Not at all.. well, unless I wasn't working. But I am impressed at being able to do so for an extended period of time, and not having saved the last 10-15K for the final two days. I'll complain about it, the lack of sleep because I chose to write late (or the writing only chooses to be written late), less relaxing downtime, behind on TV and games.. but all in all I'm happy about doing it and have already found myself thinking 'what next?'

Target for tonight is still 40K, which is doable, but probably not an easy achievement with other commitments tonight. Still, it would set things up well for the weekend. I think the characters are cooperating enough to let me get to 40K, though what direction they want to go after that is still a point of debate. I'm hoping the downward slope of the last 10K will help add some weight to the discussion. At this point, the 50K mark may be a cliff-hanger ending and I'll go back to doing plot work for a while before continuing to write it again.

Word count - Day 22

35,757 words down, 14,233 words to go.

Another 10% down and now past the 70% mark.

As expected, the 30-40K section is proving to be the hardest to write (which is amusing as I said on Day 6 that 10-20K was hardest, which I now retract). It's that part of the story where the plot needs to keep moving and build to the next peak. It is tempting to just dump a pile of information and exposition in there just to make it interesting. And all the while the characters need to remain true to themselves but still develop in increments. Then there is a small problem of not knowing how the story ends. Our poor heroes, such as they are, really don't stand a chance. Fortunately (?) I'll hit 50K words long before having to deal with this minor issue.
Three weeks in and the fatigue is beginning to set in too. Daily writing does take it out of you and whilst there hasn't been too many instances of staring at a blinking cursor it does become easier and easier to procrastinate about writing the daily requirement. Of course nanowrimo is as much, if not more about the discipline as it is the about the writing, so no real surprise there.

The current plan is to aim for 40K by the end of the working week and 45k by the end of the weekend. That puts the target at 1K per day for the final five days beyond that.

Word count - Day 19

31,447 words down, 18,553 words to go.

Over 60% and coming up on the two thirds mark.
Whilst I have a reasonably good idea of what the next few steps are, I'm not entirely sure where the story is headed any more. There is definitely enough plot to get to the 50k word mark, but there's almost certainly going to be more to tell past that word count. Part of the difficulty is I've merged two separate ideas for stories, each of which I had a reasonable idea for, and am now faced with trying to work out how an ending can be created.

In the long run, it's not a huge concern. This is a writing for the sake of writing exercise ultimately and I've already decided if I was to ever re-write the idea there would be some significant changes o be made. Of course, without having written it the first time there's a good chance i would never have discovered the problems, so I’m still happy with the outcome.

This week's pep talk email for nanwrimo was from Neil Gaiman. Even though it was sent from a false address I'll be keeping it in my mailbox. After all, how many people (other than nanowrimo'ers) can point at an email from Neil Gaiman himself.

Word count - Day 16

25,851 words down, 24,149 words to go

Past the magic halfway point which is certainly a notable point in this exercise. I've always thought the 20-40K mark to be the hardest to write, especially depending on how the story is flowing. I'm reasonably confident there's enough material to keep going though.

At the midway point the villains of the story have only just been introduced (well the grunt level bad guys; the bigger bad guys haven't even been mentioned yet). The first 'significant death' of the story is in progress. The evolution of the dying character has been a strange one. She was going to be a spoilt rich girl, then a potential love interest, then she became a warrior, then she became a love interest again, then she became dead. I'm hoping when I read over what I've just written her death (violent as it was) works in terms of the story and has at least a little shock value.. no one is safe.

I've also realised my Day numbering a little skewed between postings. The count for today is as of the morning of day 16, so there's an expectation that more writing will be done tonight. No major plans for the weekend socially so I'm hoping to get a couple of days ahead of schedule with the word count.

Word count - Day 13

No update today as yesterday wa a 'day off'' from writing.

Ostensibly this was a planned excuse to play computer games and watch TV all night and I was a little concerned it might break the writing momentum. It seems to have had an opposite effect though as now I can't wait to get back to the writing. The occasional break is good to give you alittle more perspective on where the story is headed, a subconcious check that I'm still (mostly) on the same path i think I'm supposed to be on.

Hopefully this means, when I actually get time to write today, the words will write themselves and all will be good with the world.

Word count - Day 12

20,274 words down - 29,726 words to go.

40% done, almost to the magical halfway point. So far still going well. The days when word count is down a little are easily made up the next day. For the most part the writing has been on a scene by scene basis. I have an idea of where things are headed ad even a vague clue as to how they might end, but the steps along the way are mostly writing themselves.

The initial intent was a darkly satirical story in a fantasy setting. The satire is still there occasionally but it's begun to get in the way of the story. As with most writing of any real length, the story has taken on a life of its own and wants to be written a certain way. Occasionally its just a whole lot easier to let it have its way and just go along for the ride.

I'm pretty happy with my characters so far, which makes a change. Normally I'm trying to force them to change by now, but they're remaining true to what they were created as and reacting in the ways I'd expect them to.

The only minor concern I have at this point is the story won't be finished in 50K words. This isn't entirely unexpected. i was either going to be struggling to find the last 20K or its was just going to keep going. Not too sure what I'll do once I hit the 50K. I'll see how much remains to be told after that. The writing itself is still far from what I'd normally be happy with, but I'm increasingly confident there's a few sparks of quality amongst the quantity, which is the aim of the exercise.

Word count - Day 6

11,684 words down, 38,316 words to go.

Past the first 10K words and over 20% in. From previous attempts its the next 10-20k words that tends to be the hardest. Once you get past the 30K hump its all downhill.

So far the writing has been of a less than stellar quality but that was never the aim of nanowrimo. The simple act of writing every day is more than enough effort for now. Somewhere in the 50K words of dubious standard there may be a few thousand words that can live again elsewhere.

Word count - Day 1

2130 words down, 47870 words to go

Mostly written at work, mostly narrative introduction, main character has been introduced.