Camp NaNoWriMo – Go Big – Day 6

Today was a tough one. Nothing seemed to go right at the Day Job and I was exhausted from writing way too late last night. After dinner, I was staring at a blank page and a target of 2500 words. To be honest, it seemed kind of impossible.

Then I turned to my handy-dandy outline and realized that I only had a few scenes until I hit the end of the first novella. I flipped back through the last pages I’d written last night and realized I had a pretty good handle on what needed to happen between them and the end of the book. I threw on my headset started dictating and before I knew it…

5000 words, baby!

5335 to be exact but 5K’s good enough for horseshoes or hand grenades.

So raise a  shot of fireball with me and celebrate the first half of my writing for the month of July getting finished in the first five days. Still some editing to do, but that’s cool. I’ve been looking at it and I don’t think it’s going to take a lot of rework, thanks to the time I spent on my outline. I’ll finish revising it tomorrow night, and my betas will have it on Wednesday morning. With any luck that means it’ll get to my editor on the Friday and we’re right on track.

I am now knocking on wood throwing salt over my shoulder because there’s no sure way the fuck up your plan then to talk about how smoothly everything is going.

Sometimes, I’m a dumbass.

DAY SIX: Victory! (That is all)

I don’t have a lot else to say. I’m relieved that I got through this and I’m happy that it looks like it’s actually pretty good work, and not just a bunch of shit that I vomited out of my mouth onto the digital page. It is very different from the things I’ve written and published before, so I thought make a decision about whether or not I’m going to go with the pen name, but I’ll see what my betas and editor have to say before I make a final decision. Hell, for all I know it’s really not very good and the people who read it over the next week or so are going to ask me what the hell I was thinking.

In my defense, I was thinking The Stand meets Game of Thrones meets The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Hmm. That may not be as commercially viable as I first thought.

But hey, at least I hit my word count and I didn’t go too far over. I think of about 450 words on the far side of 25,000, which is really about 3000 words last I thought this was gonna hit. It’s one of the good things about keeping careful track of the number of words you write. Your brain will help you figure out what you actually need to do to get where you want to be in that can help you curb some of the overwriting that can happen if you’re not keeping an eye on things.

The most important lesson from today is to not give into that hesitation that tends to crop up when you first sit down to write. Commit to writing just five hundred words. Get the words flowing and you’ll soon find yourself well beyond your targeted word count for the day. Your brain is an asshole that doesn’t always want you to succeed. Don’t let it get you down.

Looking Forward

Now it’s time to finish the next outline for the series. This one is probably going to take place from the villain’s point of view which will be a little different for me and a little scary. There aren’t a lot of likable characters in this next bit and I’m not really sure how to present them without making people want to throw the thing across the room. Cross your fingers for me.

Glide Path

I’m so far ahead of the glide path I can even see it from here. Yeah. Go me.