NaNoWriMo...Some Third Week Thoughts

It's been three weeks tomorrow since November, 2016 began, and in ten days it will be over.

And when November ends, I will have produced my first middle-grade novel, complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

At least, that's the plan.

I'm three weeks in. Here's how it's going so far.

I've written everyday, except Sundays. Some days I've only written a couple hundred words, which, considering my schedule, is great.

My story takes place in a spaceship that travels to another planet. Due to lack of organization and planning before NaNoWriMo began, I didn't layout the story very well. I took the road most traveled--I thought I could just write by the seat of my pants, or what's known in writing circles as "pantsing."

In the beginning, it worked out great.

Then came the second ten-thousand words. Oh, the story drags. But that's okay because NaNoWriMo is about getting the words down, not worrying about editing, or voice, or even pace. Just get it down on paper or in the computer. I thought journeying to the planet could take 50,000 words...easy.

I was wrong. It took about half that.

Before I began,  I wondered how the story might unfold once they got to the planet, but I didn't think about it much. After all, if I extended it to having them do much on the planet would make the book too long.

Yesterday, I had the most successful writing day I've ever had, at least in shear numbers. I wrote over 7K. And because of that, it brought me to over two-thousand words for each day in November. Getting my characters to the planet opened up a whole new way for me to look at the overall story. If I had had more time yesterday, I probably could have written a couple of more thousand. That will just have to wait until next week.

The next ten days will be busy. We're opening a show on Friday, having Thanksgiving the day before. But I do have ten days to write just under 18,000 words. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

NaNoWriMo Tracker: 975 words written Friday, 7031 words written yesterday,

32715 words total