Wednesday 5 November 2014

(vol 1) CHAPTER 39: “NaNoWriMo – Day 5.”

EVERY STORY HAS A BEGINNING . . .

And so it begins.

Since November 1st I have been busy writing my latest project for NaNoWriMo and am happy to say that I’m currently ahead of schedule.



DAY 1 – 2024 words

A great start to this year’s project. As always I like to do my best to keep to the 1667 target per day and I managed that on Saturday before I even got to lunch time. Unfortunately I had another project with a deadline that I need to finish so the rest of the day went on that.

Half way through Chapter One I did start to struggle but then my brain suggested I put a gang of highwaymen into the scene to through up a little conflict and it worked like a charm.



DAY 2 – 1781 words

Another good day despite having to go present shopping in the morning and then to my nephews birthday party in the evening. Still, thanks to the wife for giving me some time to myself to crack on. And as with the previous day I had another writing project, this time my entry for Flash Frenzy, to get done.  Still, the fact that I managed to beat my NaNo target and get other things written gave me a nice little confidence boost.



DAY 3 – 2723 words

I’ve started to fall into a pattern of a chapter a day and Chapter three just got away from me. I couldn’t stop and ended up exceeding my word target by 1100. Can’t say no to extra words.

Chapter 3 was a bit more challenging than the weekends work as I’m now thread a conspiracy into the plot and this had me wracking my brains for a little while. Still, with a little brainstorming, I think I’ve come up with a threat that is much improved over the original, paper thin idea I had.



DAY 4 – 233 words

Every NaNoWriMo has its bad days and this was my first. With my Netbook broken I have no way of typing up anything on my work lunches so it all has to be done at home in the evenings. This is fine on any other day but last night was Quiz Night. Still 233 words are better than nothing and I got a nice little opening to Chapter 4.



DAY 5 – 3242 words

With holiday to use up at work, I thought I might be nice to use two days at each end of NaNoWriMo. So today is the first of those. After waving the wife off to work and dropping my son of at the child minders, I came home, booted up the laptop and got to work. I took a break after the first 1000 and organised my Stephen King collection into chronological order (been meaning to do that for months). After a quick snack I jumped back onto Scrivener and managed another 1000 before getting a call from the child minder to let me know my son had a rash and could I pick him.

After a quick trip to the doctors he’s fine. Just have to keep an eye on him. I managed to get a little more done after dinner but my plan for 5000 words today has drifted away on the wind. Still, I’ve got the 14th and 27th off so there’s still time to accomplish a write-a-thon this month.




PREVIOUSLY ON FALLEN SWORDS . . .

The story itself is coming along nicely. A few of the lightly planned details have now been reworked and defined helping me to go forward. One in particular is the historical event that is the catalyst to the main issue for the world. All I had planned for this event before I started writing was that it was a cataclysmic disaster in the vein of Pompeii or Krakatoa. After finishing Chapter Two I now have a reason for this disaster and a sub plot that leads to its cause.

I’m also enjoying those moments when little C-list characters turn up that you hadn’t planned for in the chapter notes. One such character was the leader of the Bandits who turn up in Chapter One. It’s rare for me to have such a fully formed character pop into my head but he did. I saw his costume, heard his speech and he just ‘fell’ onto the page. I’m tempted to bring him back later because I think he deserves more screen time.



UPDATES

And that’s about it. So far so good. I’m going at a nice, steady pace, despite today’s little hiccup. Fingers crossed I can carry this momentum forward and get another 10,000 under my belt before next week’s post.

Good luck to all those currently taking park, whether your word count is 1000 or 10,000. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and as I mentioned last week, my 2007 entry seemed doomed to fail until I hit three 7000+ days in a row in the last week.

Big shout out to Adam Nelson (15433), Caitlin McColl (5668), David Graffham (6371) and Rasha Tayaket (5689). These four are my current buddies on NaNoWriMo and all four are doing really well in these first few days. Keep up the good writing guys.

See you in seven.

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