Final Word Count: 34,555
Written by Aaron on June 21st, 2009
I didn’t hit my goal, but I am more than happy with my first attempt. I penned 34,555 words in 30 days. That’s an average of 1,152 per day. Which ain’t too shabby.
Novel Update
Written by Aaron on June 8th, 2009
Realistically, I’m probably not going to meet my 50,000-word goal by my deadline, which is fast approaching. That’s okay with me, because I’m more than halfway done and I will continue to work on it until I reach the 50,000-word mark. I’m okay with that. The exercise is to get someone writing, which it did. I’ve posted some excerpts anonymously on some writing critique websites and most of the comments are positive; in fact, they are way more positive than I was expecting.
I’ll be posting some excerpts here in the coming days, and am considering publishing the finished work here as a serial. We’ll see.
This week is getting away from me.
Written by Aaron on May 27th, 2009
This is one of those weeks I read about in the blogs of others who have traveled down the 30-day-novel road. Writer’s block, messed up schedules, uncooperative kids… Hopefully this weekend I can get caught up, because if I don’t it will be very hard to meet my deadline.
I told you I would get caught up.
Written by Aaron on May 24th, 2009
My first draft crossed the 50% mark today, and it was a very joyous moment, believe me. With the due date being Saturday, June 13, I think I’ll be able to finish without too much fuss, but life is unpredictable. I am pretty much right on track, so if I miss a few days of writing, I could easily get behind.
As soon as the rough draft is done, the editing begins, which I am looking forward to probably more than the initial writing, as I already have ideas to fine-tune some material I’ve already penned. I have started telling the story to my girls at night for bedtime to get their input and refine the storyline and plot turns. They love it so far and look forward to each installment.
Typo Epiphany
There was an interesting typo in that last paragraph that turned out to be a pretty cool epiphany about the writing process. I had typed “refind” instead of “refine” when talking about my novel’s storyline, and it made me realize how much of a good practice it is to go back and refind your storyline periodically. I’ve read many novels, in pritn and online, where the story just gets lost. Lost in a jumble of characters, plot twists, diverse locales, mutiple antagonists, dueling plotlines, et cetera… You’ve probably experienced it, too, while reading. “Whatever happened to so-and-so… I thought they were supposed to be…”
One of the rules of the 30-day novel is no rewriting and no backtracking. The goal is a first draft, not a finished novel. Every author wishies their first drafts were print-ready, but that’s simply not the case. I’m looking forward to going back in a couple weeks, printing out the whole thing and reading it with a red pen in hand. Editing on a computer is quick and easy, but nothing beats a red Bic pen.
One Day Down, 2% complete
Written by Aaron on May 14th, 2009
I am very happy with my first day of writing. I wrote in three sessions during the day and have a completed 1100-word chapter one. That’s just shy of five pages, and like I said, I am happy with that.