I wrote another 6145 words on the novel tonight and now have a total of 107,207 words. I like that number! I may write more today before midnight, but for now I'm done.
Tonight I revised four more chapters in The Scribe of Irohila. I was doing this with my friends at Forward Motion during one of the bi-monthly editing marathon weekends. Edit word count - 10,021 words.
Then I went back to The Writing Bridge and decided on the spur of the moment to do one of their November challenges. It turned into a short story only 750 words long called One Winter, Two Trees. After they get all their entries for the month they have a poll to pick a favorite. Wish me luck. I've never entered any kind of writing competition before.
I'm finally submitting my first novel's first chapter for critiques. I put it two places - at a children/young adult literature critique circle at Forward Motion and at a children's writers area at The Writing Bridge, a writers' critique site I just joined yesterday. I've never gotten a critique before and am hoping for some kind of response on this. The only feedback I ever got from this novel was from my kids who both thought it was wonderful. My son helped with some early critiques that helped pare the story down to the essentials. Anyway. I'm impatiently waiting and meanwhile must go on and edit chapter seven as I'm participating in an Editing Marathon this weekend at Forward Motion.
I just read the fourteen chapters of the River Girl middle grade novel I wrote last January. I was amazed... it is much better than I expected. I read the first eleven chapters out loud to Keith and he even liked it. This is very encouraging! I need to get busy and write the last three chapters, then revise it.
As of about 3am I now have written 100,140 words on the novel! I wrote more, really... I've deleted some. Already I'm editing the early chapters while trying to finish the last few chapters.
As usual I rushed through the ending not doing it right so now I'm having to go over that section to fix it. Yesterday I re-did chapter eighteen. Today I'll be in chapter nineteen. Then three more chapters to fix... plus I'll probably be editing chapter five today and adding in some dialogue, details and descriptions there.
Anyhow, I've reached my second goal - 100K - and now want to reach the third goal which is to write more than I did last year during November - 106+K...
All last night while I was writing I downloaded and listened this concert from the Grateful Dead music archive. It was from Winterland in San Francisco on New Years Eve 1971-2... a great memory as I was there that night thanks to my ex-husband, John Murphy, who insisted it was the thing to do. Great music!!
I told my kids I was doing research for the novel. Really, the novel research for Far Out has been great. I can't remember when I've had so much fun researching a novel!
I spent the day editing the first three chapters - adding dialogue, description and details. I'm very happy with the way this novel is turning out. I'm also working on the last chapter - chapter 22 on night 22... can you believe that? Anyhow, its going well. I increased the manuscript by about 5000 words and my new word count total is 96,170.
Yes, I took a night off somewhere in there during the last forty-eight hours. Anyhow I'm happy to say I wrote another 5K+ today and am currently at 91,053 words.
I wrote almost nothing on my novel in the last 24 hours. 445 words. That's all. Instead I spent the day studying things ... like the life of an editor and what it takes to get published. Then I went to bed early and couldn't sleep. Instead I read an entire issue of Writer's Digest and more of chapter three in Chris Baty's book.
At 4am I gave up sleeping and came out here to write a story for our local writer's club meeting. The topic-word was 'spelunking' and I wrote a 956-word story using my Hiram characters... they are fun to write about.
Now I think I'll try bed again. I have a doctor appt. at 9:30 in the morning and writer's club at 2pm.
I wrote another 5248 words and am currently working on chapter seventeen. Five more chapters after this one! Elaine has the messiest life ever. I'm so glad I'm not Elaine. My new total word count: 81,685.
About *Far Out... The Journey To Oblivion*
by LJ Martin:
1. It takes place in the sixties
2. It has a beautiful female MC
3. It explains some of the history of that time period, and I lived it so I can tell about what it was really like
4. It takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California and Southern Oregon
5. My heroine has a very serious problem
6. There's lots of sub plots that add to her downfall
7. There's sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll
8. All the good slang terms and platitudes associated with the sixties are in there somewhere
9. There's two religions represented: Christianity and Paganism
10. It isn't autobiographical
I finished my 5000 words for the day a little early... at 9:22pm. I'm so happy! My new word count is 76,437. My character ran into a few very stressful crisis situations. It helps to pack on the word count.
I worked on the novel yesterday from noon to ten in the evening and completed 5099 more words. Chapter 14's first draft is done! I have 8 more chapters planned so this means I'm almost 2/3 of the way done and so happy about that! This is turning out to be an awesome saga. I've had to deviate from my original plot some (but not much)... my MC, Elaine, has a mind of her own. The current total word count is 71,323.
Elaine, my main character (MC) is an adult now. I thought this would be easier to write because there's more excitement and less research, but I'm finding her to be a kind of person I didn't expect. She's more willing to take risks than I am, more crafty and conniving. More energetic in some ways. She's taken scenes away from me and gone in the wrong direction several times. I've had to revise my outline, or at least stray from it more than I expected to... and that outline was pretty good, plot-wise. Anyhow, I piled on 5447 new words last night and the new total is 66,224. I just finished chapter 13 out of 22 planned chapters.
I wrote most of the night again. Again I exceeded my goal of 5000 words (but not by much). Also I had to delete over 2000 words when my character went far astray from the intent of this novel. I mean, she was really far out there, so I deleted and rewrote. That means I really wrote over 7000 words tonight but I can count only 5K. At least it was a better writing night than yesterday! My new total: 60,777 words.
I had a bad night! I slept from nine to midnight thinking I'd need some sleep to be able to write better. But then I worked from midnight to dawn and produced only about 3000 words. Frustrating! I now have a total of 55,695.
Besides getting to the 'winning' mark of 50,000 words, I managed to write over 5000 for the day so I met my personal goal as well. I finished chapter 11 so that is the half-way point in my novel's outline. My total word count now is 52,597.
I did it! I crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line on Day Eleven this year. Pretty good considering I took one day off. Last year it took fifteen days and the two years before, seventeen days each. I'm excited because I challenged myself and was able to write faster than ever. Yay!
The novel however is only half-way done. I just finished the rough draft of chapter eleven and there's twenty-two chapters in my outline. So I'm going to keep writing, hopefully continuing at around 5000 words daily, for the rest of the month. It would be great to have the entire first draft completed in November.
Yay! I'm at 40,540! Less than 10,000 more words before I hit the finish line for NaNoWriMo! But I'm only about half done with the novel. Its getting good! She's about to make some major changes in her life, going from teen years to young adult. I'm ready for the change. I hope she is. My word count for the night was 5075 - right on target.
Its a good thing I did over 7000 words yesterday because tonight I did only 3131 - didn't even make it to my goal of 5000. It was a terrible writing day because I didn't get enough sleep the night before. Like usual when I'm writing a novel I stayed up most of the night to write, thinking I could sleep in until noon. But then my daughter's teacher called very early and wanted to set up an appointment for noon. I'm such a push over (especially when I'm barely awake) I said yes. Then Keith got on the phone which was there in our room and talked to one of our fuel suppliers, and that woke me up the rest of the way so I couldn't get back to sleep for a few more needed hours of rest. I spent the rest of the day trying to make up for my sleep loss and my writing tonight went way too slow... however I just finished the first draft of chapter eight and am starting chapter nine. The total word count now is 35,465.
I'm doing great at keeping up with my word count goal of 5000 words daily. I missed that on a few days because of having to go out of town but did it again tonight. My new total is 25,448 - just over half way.
I'm concerned about the length of the chapters. I thought they would all be around 5000 words but I see myself ending between 3000 and 4000 words often enough. Not that its a bad word count for a chapter, but I thought the novel would be long enough to last me the entire month. If I finish this novel before the end of November I'll have to find something else to write on. Maybe I could make up some related stories, like what happened to certain characters that got dropped along the way.
I stayed up most of the night and produced another 5583 words. My new total word count is 10150.
Chapter One has about 6000 words and Chapter Two has about 3000 words, but will be added to later after I do more historical research. I'm working on Chapter Three now.
I didn't get as much done this time because I spent the day on the road. I had to take my daughter to Yreka and back for doctor appointments and that's a two-hour drive each direction, so I was very tired by the time I got home. I slept an hour to refresh myself but that doesn't make up for my five-hours of sleep last night. I write so much better when I'm well-rested!
My word count right now is 4567. That's 3251 from last night and 1316 from tonight.
My thoughts about this year's project are... that I must take good care of myself to put myself in top writing condition. This means good food, good drinks (like tea) and vitamins.
I have another out of town trip coming up in a few days. I wish I didn't - but that's the way it has to be.
I stayed up past midnight last night meaning to write only about 1000 words. But by the time I got to 1000 I was having too much fun to stop. Not that chapter one was pleasant. So many bad things happened in chapter one it was pathetic and disheartening for my poor protagonist. But I enjoyed the writing and got to 3251 words by about 2:30 am. I figured I was writing about 1200 words per hour.
