Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A NaNo triumph story

Yesterday I crossed the 50,000 mark in the words I've written for my WIP, In the Land of Pangaea.  This is significant because I wrote all the words in November, which is what you need in order to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Since I didn't participate officially, I don't get a nifty winner's button to put here, but I'm still incredibly pleased to be able to report my success.  In all, I spent twelve of the preceding twenty-six days writing, sometimes as "few" as 3,000 words in a day and sometimes as many as 5,000.  My original schedule had me writing for more of those days, and finishing today, in time to devote Thanksgiving and Black Friday to family and the last day of the month to my regular weekends off, but I was informed that today wouldn't be a regular kind of day either, so I had to quickly compensate, which was why there were two 5,000 days and a couple of 4,500s, too.

Although certainly a great push in the overall effort, my plans call for more than a hundred thousand more words, which puts Pangaea at the longest manuscript I've written to date, a different kind of achievement entirely.  I figure if I stay at a fairly good clip I'll be done by February or March, and I will certainly let you know how that goes, but I wont beat myself up.  I said I wouldn't if I didn't hit the NaNo goal, and maybe I wouldn't have, but I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Back in the old days, when I only had the one blog (Scouring Monk), I wrote victory posts after each successful NaNo, explaining how that year's story came to be.  I won't be doing that here, but I figured I'd at least acknowledge the tradition.

I'll be taking a short break from the WIP, probably won't be writing again until Tuesday.  But I'm not worried at all about it.  I've got NaNo behind me.  I've made a good start.  Now I just have to finish it.

14 comments:

  1. I will give you an unofficial huzzah then. 150,000 words? Good luck selling that.

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    1. It will sell incredibly well among bibliophiles. All twelve of them!

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  2. Congratulations, Tony! Now you have the next few days free.

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    1. The funny thing was, I immediately started thinking about what absolutely has to happen in the next chapter, the things I need to write. So I definitely did not leave writing mode behind.

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  3. Congratulations are in order. 50k in a month is quite an achievement in or outside NaNo.

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    1. Oh, I know. It takes a great deal of dedication and determination, as well as sacrifice. But it's worth it.

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  4. That's awesome. You don't need a badge to participate. Even if it's not an official Nanowrimo, you still got a huge chunk of the book done.

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  5. Congratulations Tony! You're a prolific writer.

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    1. And to continue what I was saying in my Alex reply, I realized what needed to happen in some other manuscripts as well, which is just as well to say here because otherwise I would have written a whole post about it. Today I'm thankful for realizing perhaps the last thing I will personally edit into the Finnegan/Modern Ark book. And I'm very happy about that.

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  6. Woo hoo. Congrats, Tony! I'm glad you made it past the 50,000-word goal. And you totally deserve the badge, whether or not you participated officially. :D

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    1. I made it a hundred words or so past the goal. Would've gone about two thousand words over if I'd been able to write on Wednesday, but I can't be greedy, and am plenty happy with what I wrote on the preceding days because of the modifications that needed to be made in the writing schedule. Perhaps I will steal a badge to celebrate!

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  7. Awesome! I know how tough it can be to hit that 50,000 word mark. You need to officially participate to get some of the fantastic goodies. I got Scrivener half price last year, and it's cut my novel writing time in half!

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    1. The way I write, a template would only get in my way. It just wouldn't be my writing, which is the whole reason to do it (at least as far as I'm concerned).

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