Monday 30 November 2009

The Final Countdown


It is almost finished - I'm almost finished!

My first attempt at the Write a Novel in the Month of November (Nano) has been an experience that I will definitely repeat.

I hadn't contemplated trying Nano until one of my writer Facebook friends suggested this was a great way to clean up lurking WIPs. I have loads of those. I mentioned in a previous post that the Nano novel I am writing is something masquerading as a short story. In that previous post I said I was hand writing the story and would type it up when I had the time. That is still the case, I have continued to write almost every day although I have to admit that I didn't take full advantage of the support offered from the website set up to help all the participants in this challenge.

So how did I fair in this gruelling challenge? It was tough especially because I continued to edit my other WIP novel. I have never written so much in my life before (and my house has never been so dirty). I have over 17,000 words on my hard drive and I calculate another 13,000 in the two note books I filled over the month. I still haven't finished the story even though I know most of the plot.

OK, so it isn't the 50,000 words the challenge set, but 30,000 is still a good shout and I will continue to write the same volume each day and hope to have the first draft finished by Christmas.

This process has been a real revelation to me. I normally take two years to write a first draft and here I am with the potential of a two month draft. I can't wait to start the edits.

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