Salutations, my curious congregation. I am currently writing this on the 4th (well, kind of, it's 3 in the morning so it hasn't been the 4th for very long) but it won't be coming out until the 11th, which means at that point we'll be nearing the halfway point of National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. And because I'm up to my elbows in that this month and have it on the brain, I'm going to give you an update about it instead of blogging about something else.
TWs: Irreverence, the existential terror of actually finishing a book, and some of the dirty tricks I'm using to pad out my word count for this first draft because I am, in fact, a boosted animal.
So, I'm writing this on day 4 of NaNo, and I've pledged myself 90k this time around. To get 90k, I have to write about 3k a day, which isn't actually too bad. What I've actually ended up doing for the past 3 days has been 5k a day, which is as much as I was writing when I was at my peak productivity back in 2013.
Of course, they say freelance jobs are either feast or famine and I happen to be in a big dry spell right now. Which has left me a lot of time to focus on hammering out prose. That, and I am currently 34 weeks pregnant which apparently means it's a distinct possibility that any day now my son in progress might decide to grace us with his presence and if that means a couple of days of no productivity at all I want to be far enough ahead of the curve to be able to afford that.
So we're at the beginning of day 4 at the time I'm writing this, and I'm sitting on 15k words. Which is not bad all things considered. I'm pretty happy with it and going to try to keep up this pace because it doesn't feel like too much for me right now and writing is sort of like exercise; you have to build up to the big numbers and I'd like to continue flexing.
I'm going Urban Fantasy this time around. Fey stuff. I started with a set of titles that are basically old defunct medical conditions and this particular novel is currently called "Elfstroke" because fey and puns and yes, I will go stand in the corner.
Anyway, I'm trying out the Save the Cat plot structure this year, and it's working out pretty well so far. I outlined, sort of, but only very loosely. I'm mostly pantsing, but along the guideline that is this plot structure. I'm actually very pleased with how well this plot structure is allowing me to just tell myself the story as I go and still have some form of rhyme or reason to what is happening and when.
I don't want to go on a big ramble about the plot or characters just yet because not knowing all the answers is what's keeping me interested in finishing this story right now, but expect to hear more about this at some point in the future as I get my nonsense together.
Fortune Favors,
Robin the Red
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