New and Improved NaNoWriMo Plans!

Obviously, I couldn’t go more than a few days without making at least some slight changes to my plans. That just wouldn’t match my new flibberty-gibberty internet persona. The other morning, I was sitting in a loading dock in Chicago (well, the truck was in dock, and I was in the truck), just writing away, when I realized I really didn’t know how much book I have left to write. At some point, “a lot” just wasn’t a satisfying answer.

Fortunately, I’m all organized and stuff, so I pulled up Scrivener and counted the scenes I still had marked “to do.” Then I multiplied that by 1500 because that seems to be a rough average length for my scenes. Then I had a brief heart attack. According to this calculation, I still had 95,000 words left to write. OMGWTFHELPPPP!!

And here I’d been so worried that I’d run out of book to write in the middle of November. Ha! When I finally stopped hyperventilating, I calculated some more. (former banker here, sorry). At the time, there were 37 days left to the end of November, which meant I had to write a mere 2600 words a day to finish by then. That’s really not so bad. I’ve already been working on getting in the habit of writing 2000 words daily, and it’s been going pretty well so far. What’s a measly 600 words more?

So far, it hasn’t been too bad. On the day that I figured all of this out, I had several huge bursts of energy and ended up writing in the neighborhood of 5000 words before finally collapsing. I think it helped that the weather was simply gorgeous and I got a few chances to get out of the truck and skip through the leaves on the south side of Chicago. This is my favorite time of year. I think it energizes me. Everything is coming together right now. Characters are being cooperative, though Kendryk has been picking fights, which is so not like him, but hey, fights add to the word count, so why not? If he wants more conflict in his life, who am I to deprive him?

So anyway, all of this leads me, in typically roundabout fashion, to the realization that I can easily set a goal of 75K for NaNoWriMo, and maybe even reach it, while at the same time getting to the very end of this monstrous tome. Wouldn’t that be something? My only concern is Thanksgiving. In previous years, I’ve only succeeded because I managed to get to 50k right before the big turkey day, and then wrote a few thousand more afterwards. With such a big goal, I probably can’t slack off like that.

We’ll be in Oregon, at my brother’s and the whole clan is coming. This means nine nieces and nephews all at the same time, which is awesome. I’m so looking forward to it. I should still be able to write if I make myself do it by getting up a bit early (ha!), or staying up a bit later (more likely). I think we’ll stay in the truck, which might help, since I’ll have my usual space to write, rather than maneuvering around a spare room.  I can do this! I can!

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