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.

Monday - day 5

OK, so Sunday was a struggle (only 400 words between visitors). I had plans to add another 400 words in the evening, but couldn't get started. I was torn between re-reading some of the background information and actually writing. Of course, the background information and research won. I was worried that some of the stuff I was writing was factually incorrect, so i needed to check some of the details.

Of course, with another day's perspective, I realise that everything I am writing is factually incorrect! This is supposed to be a novel, not a recounting of real fact. But, because I have interviewed someone who was there at the time ... I feel a need to tell the stories correctly against the backdrop of history.

Anyway, I think I'm gradually getting over this problem. I felt the same again today, and delayed starting writing until very late in the day. But when I chose a rather minor episode to describe, the words flowed easily. I guess this is using avoidance to combat avoidance. And it seems to be working.

So total words today was 1341. Total yesterday (as I missed the blog) was only 869. But the total is now 8651 words, so I remain slightly ahead of target.

NanoWriMo Day 3

I faced the first barrier in writing today. Finshed a scene this morning, and then I djust didn't know where to go next. As we had a day visiting people, showing off Sam to friends, I was able to hide from this block most of the day. But when I sat down to write late on, there was much prevaricating before any words appeared. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I had to force myself to accept a rather lame introduction to a scene to allow me to get the main parts of the scene down on paper (well PC type paper). Once I had done this, the rest just started to flow out.

However, I didn't finish the scene. I've also realsed that closing off scenes in neat chunks creates a sense of closure each night, which makes starting again the next day all the more difficult. In future, I am going to leave a scene hanging overnight, so that I know what I'm going to start writing about in the morning. Hopefully this will lead to the next scene appearing in my head while I'm finishing the previous one. I suspect I've read about this trick in some book on writing - it may even have been in "No Plot, No Problem".

So today was a rather short 871 words, but I'm still at 6441 words in total and so well ahead of target.

NanoWriMo Day 2

Another good day's writing, and the first real test. yesterday I had a whole day working from home, so finding time for the writing was pretty easy once I had finished other work. But today I was at the office and didn't get home until 6.30. After time with Olivia and our little boy (Sam is only two weeks old), I had to negotiate time for writing later on. But so far so good, I still managed to fit in over 2,500 words describing two different scenes.

My character was experiencing more training today, a mix of scenes from early in his army career to the early stages of the war in France. I have been feeling quite clear about his character, but some of the other character are now starting to develop as I write more.

Total so far is 5570 words - over 10% done!

NanoWriMo Day 1

Great day's writing today. The target for nanowrimo is 1,500 words a day to hit the 50,000 target within 30 days. And I managed nearly 3,000 today. This was writing up ideas for scenes that have been in my mind for a while, so maybe easier than it will be in the next wfew weeks. But it's great to be a day ahead already.

Unfortunately the main nanowrimo site is so slow and overloaded today, I can't boast about my word count on thst site. So I've set up this blog to track my word cound and progress.

Today my character experienced scenes in training for the army, based in Inverness in the 1930's.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

OK, so I've signed up for the annual event - National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The aim is to write a draft of a novel in 30 days - 50,000 words before the end of November. With a two week baby in the house, this may be madness, but if you never try ...

I have an concept for a novel that I have been working on for some time, based on a relative who spent most of the second world war in a POW camp. From training in Scotland to capture and finally walking home, his experiences tell another side of the war that is not often heard. Wish me luck in finding 50,000 words on this over the next 30 days.