November 30 is looming for us NaNo participants. Fifty thousand words. A huge number. Even its size changes depending on the type of day we have. At the beginning, it's a challenge, something to chip away, a safe distance away. A week in, and it's formidable, a wall that stretches to the sky. Halfway, fifty thousand is out of sight, impossible to reach.
Now? It's the finish line. The light at the end of the tunnel. The bottom of the slope. Whatever was the worry about?
I broke through the 40k barrier over the weekend. Seeing the number of words drop to four digits is a thing of beauty. The countdown is entering its final phase. There is little that can stop me now. As long as I have story to write, I will be winning.
I hope to validate Tuesday evening. That's just 5000 words away as I write this. In the past week, I've averaged over 2500 words a day. I've seen my mid-week counts rise to 2500-3000 words where in previous years I considered myself lucky to get to 2000.
I will cross the finish line.
From one NNWM winner to another (well, winner-to-be), congrats.
ReplyDeleteI'm a fairly disciplined worker, so I've found the word count isn't the problem. Once I have an idea of what to do and in what form, things tend to come fairly naturally. It's finding an idea that matters that's toughest.
Apologies for the delay in responding. November is weird when writing.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a problem with having an idea, just figuring out which one was viable. I shouldn't have waited until Hallowe'en to make a decision, and I really needed a better view of where the story was going to go. This year, I never really had time to work out how each character behaved, by picturing the scenes in my head before writing a word. I never even had a proper voice for my main characters.
Next year, I need to leave time to write a short scene, even if it's out of continuity. It worked amazingly well a few years ago with "By the Numbers".