Friday 30th November

So NaNoWriMo reaches a close, and yes I have achieved the goal. I wrote most of yesterday and came close to finishing, with just 500 words to complete today. My Main Character had already reached the finish line ahead of me, so I had to go back in the book and create a new scene extension to fill the required number of words, but there were plenty of places where I have dropped ideas along the way, so adding one of these was easy.

It's interesting how the character has developed over this month of writing about him. As I have interviewed someone who experienced these conditions in the second world war, I started with him in mind, but the novel character started to exert his own character part way through the writing. So I now have a much clearer idea of what he is about. So, now I need to clean up the start of he story and build this character deliberately as the story unfolds.

Some of the minor characters have become quite important as well, developing strong personalities. I guess I hadn't expected this at the start, but it helps with developing a much fuller, engaging book.

So, no writing for a week or so - I'm going to leave the book to self-develop for a while. Then the editing begins!

NanoWriMo Day 27

Yahoo. Fantastic day. Over 6,500 words means I have caught up with the backlog and completed today's words and I'm ahead. Yes, the little totaliser is in the black for the first time this week. Fantastic. Now just the final 5K words to complete by Friday. Suddenly it feels easy.

And my main character has just made the journey back from captivity to reaching the Rhine and the Americans. The Story is reaching its conclusion exactly as I reach the 50K words. It's almost as if I planned it that way!

NanoWriMo Day 26

Still with the challenge, after 26 days of bouts of frenetic typing followed by days of staring at the computer screen waiting for the next scene to emerge. Somewhat behind, but nothing too drastic (5000 words). I am sure I can catch this up in the next few days, particularly as I have four days of solid writing ahead, with no work to distract me.

I found the NaNoWriMo widgets site this evening, so you can see my progress on the progress meter on the right. So no need to tell you that I'm at 38K words, with 5K to catch and another 7K to complete ... in 4 days. HELP!

NanoWriMo Day 20

Day 20 comes and I'm two thirds of the way through this adventure. No posts for a week, as I've been fighting with the real issues of NaNoWriMo ... all those feelings that are predicted in the plot! I got fed up and frustrated. After hitting 20K words, I was pretty sure that no-one will ever want to read this rubbish, so it took a few days to get going again.

And a couple of days in NaNoWriMo week means you're suddenly behind by 5K words ... tough to catch up. So I've been using my goal setting techniques on myself (see my LEJOG blog for more on goal setting). The most visual cue for getting the work out is my Excel spreadsheet, which is colour coded - red when I'm behind and black when I'm ahead. obvious really, but seeing the line of red from this week has really spurred me on to catch up today.

So, after several poor and mediocre days, today was fantastic. Over 6K words in a day (my record so far) took me through the 30K mark and on past 33,333 so that I'm actually ahead of schedule. I also checked out my MBA thesis today and ran the word count on that document. It was 28K words, so this novel is now definitely the longest work I have ever written ... and in just 20 days. I seem to remember the MBA thesis taking months. But I guess that included the editing ... and there's going to be a lot of that needed over the next few months.

Tuesday - day 13

Another terrible day yesterday - zero words written. But followed by an amazing day's writing today. As I started to write the words just flowed out, and my main character was transported from scene to scene, each one developing and completing before I had time to consider the other characters and relevance of the scene ... just write, just keep writing I was thinking. So my hero has been through battle, capture, pow camp and onto working parties ... all in one day.

That was nearly 6000 words today - and forum contributions on the nanowrimo site and even time to update my blog. That's thousands more words than I have ever managed to produce in a day before ... in any form ... novel, manuscript or business stuff. Fantastic achievement (I think).

So that contribution saw me break through the 20K mark. Yes 20,000 words of the novel completed, and I'm almost back on track - just 1,000 words behind the target schedule. But with another couple of day's productive writing this week all should be well for the challenge of week 3 ...

Sunday - day 11

I have to admit that I had a terrible time trying to write over this weekend. With family commitments, I found it more difficult to write during the weekend than I do during the week. So hardly any words yesterday leaves me well behind schedule. A decent stab at tonight means that i have the habit of writing back on track, but an escalating challenge to hit the target in 20 days time.

Today 1500 words, total so far 15,000 words.

Wednesday - day 7

The end of the first week is already upon us. With seven days writing, there is a word target of 11666 ... and I'm ahead of target (just). Yesterday wasn't so good, with just 900 words leaving me behind target for the first time. But the words have flowed out tonight and I'm back on track again.

My main character is developing nicely as I have planned, based on the person I interviewed. I'm not sure about some of his characteristics in the opening of the story, but I think these will become clearer as the action develops. But while the opening is developing, a number of his side-kicks are growing into characters of their own that will hold the story together when edited into final shape.

So, I'm happy with progress. After 20-ish% of the book, the opening is ending, and the action is beginning. The main character will soon experience the most life-changing experience which leads into the bulk of the book. Nicely placed for the next two weeks of writing, then the final week to tidy it all up. Well, at least that's today's plan.

Words today 2102 (best yet), making 11680 in total so far.