NaNoWriMo 2009 Day Twenty-Nine

Word Count: 50 740

Victories: several

Is it tacky to post my winner's badge here? You know, I don't think I care.

Well! There we go. That's one way to get a novel draft out. In terms of the draft, I'm really happy with where it's gone. It's a solid effort and there are lots and lots of things for me to work on, and several creative ways I can see adding to my word count. Since I'll be filling in gaps, I think Draft 1.2 will be a little easier to work on than the last 30 days of slog has been. And here we are, on one of the few super late nights I had to pull during the month.

It doesn't hurt that I'm really in love with this story. Yes, that is most definitely a good thing.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Day Twenty-Eight

Word Count: 45 422

Radical narrative shifts: 2

One of the fun things about doing a full draft - meaning a draft of a story with a beginning, middle, and end - within November is the length of the thing. I'm just not capable of going much beyond 50k in one month without having some kind of nervous breakdown / horrendous lapse of personal hygiene. What this means is that there are enormous gaps in the narrative that are waiting to be filled in later.

One consequence of this situation is that as the climax approaches, I'm throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the mix in order to make sure that my heroine arrives at the end (mostly) intact, if profoundly changed.

So I'm seeing a proliferation of deus ex machina right now. If I were writing a play for an ancient Greek audience, it would be a massive hit, no doubt. Or at the very least, satisfy some of their aesthetic criteria. As it stands, the work of December (and possibly but hopefully not beyond) is going to be to carefully seed all this last minute information into what came before. Presto, chango! Deus ex machina, gone!

(What's the plural of deus ex machina, anyway? Dei ex machinae, or something?)

NaNoWriMo 2009 Day Twenty-Seven

Word Count: 42 162
Leaping grandpas: 1

What can I say? I'm writing my way through the end of the story - and I have no idea how all this is going to get resolved. I suspect several characters will die, undie, redie, and / or spontaneously combust. Three more days; 7838 words to go. Not a cake walk, but totally doable now that the weekend is here.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Days Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six

Word Count: 40 464
Lily livered heroes: 5

I'm sending my people into the House of Bad for the big finish. Telling this sort of thing in retrospect - because the outcome is already known to whoever's survived and is writing it down - is proving to be a bit of a fun challenge.

I'm planning to pour it on over the weekend - I aim to have NaNo mostly if not totally in the bag by the end of Sunday. Nothing like the spirit of competition / feeling jealous of others who have already crossed the finish line to make you want to work!

NaNoWriMo 2009 Day Twenty-Four

Word Count: 38 533

Set-ups to big events: 2

Okay, I'm looking at how much is left to go and I'm taking Chris Baty's advice to start winding things up. I'm at 11k shy of the ultimate goal, I know that's not a whole lot of word count left to work in a big finish.

Gotta love big finishes!

NaNoWriMo 2009 Days Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three

Word Count: 38 047
Bitch fights: several

Okay, most of the bitch fighting has been going on in my head and / or with actual people. But there's been some pretty good face slapping going on in the novel, too!

Seriously, yo, on Sunday I wrote a grand total of 21 words. Somehow there's something a little bit sad about those 21 words, as opposed to days where I just don't manage to crank out any. Well, it'll all be over in six more days - at least for this draft. I'm hovering below par by about 2k, things are getting a little intense with work-work, but I think it will all work out just fine.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Day Twenty-One

Word Count: 35483
Strategic uses of the cat: 2

35k is supposed to be a magic number in NaNo terms. And yes, it does feel to me like everything is going to be totally okay in terms of reaching 50k by the end of the month.

So I'm already worrying about what December is going to look like. I want to finish this baby! And although I've got lots of ideas rattling around right now about how to fill the very substantial holes in my story, I'm worried about running out of steam. Plus the holidays...they always throw a wrench into the works, don't they?

But you know there's that old zen saying about worry: worrying is like putting a horse on top of another horse and trying to ride.