2015 Flash Fiction Word
Count = 38413
2015 CampNaNo Word
Count = 9932
2015 TOTAL WORD
COUNT = 48345
Give or take a few hours, it’s
the half way point of CampNaNoWriMo July 2015.
I’m still ahead of target and
haven’t slipped into the red yet (although it’s been close). I’m not as focused
as I’d like though, never getting close to the daily word target of 1667 that I
normally achieve in the November contest. But things are busy, July is supposed
to be a warm up, and I’m in that horrible middle section of the novel where the
preproduction was thinnest, causing me to create on the fly.
I went away with the family this weekend, a nice long
weekend on the Isle of Wight. My trusty laptop came with us so that, once my
son was asleep, I could hopefully get some writing done. And I did. Friday and
Saturday nights saw me reaching around 1000 words. Unfortunately, I slipped on
the Sunday and got zero done so all that ‘word profit’ was wasted.
But for now, let’s take a look at how my NaNo writing has
gone.
Day Nine – 307 words
A
half day at work and then home to see my poorly wife and son. I managed to find
a small window in the evening and used to tie up the scene from the previous
day involving a creature breaking into Mike’s house.
Day Ten – 1078 words
A
long day of packing, a ferry trip, a drive round the island, before finding our
caravan site and settling in. Once my son was asleep (or pretending to be) I
fired up the lap top and took advantage of the peace and quiet.
Chris
and Mike have fled the house and have a ‘body’ to take care of. This was all
about Mike denying what he had seen, while Chris begins to get frustrated by
the attitude of the one person he thought he could rely on. It’s here that
their friendship gets thin.
Day Eleven – 935 words
A
tiring day out at Robin Hill; nice weather, good food, and a very well behaved
son. I was shattered when we got back to our caravan but somehow managed to
find a refreshing angle on the story.
I
used the next chapter to fold Mike back around to the institute. With Chris
having no family, this is really the only place he can go for help. He has a
meeting with the quite helpful Dr Gellibrand, knowing that he’s let his friend
down and needs to find him again.
Day Twelve – 0 words
I
said I wouldn’t do it but it happened again. It’s not that I didn’t feel like
it, more that it just sipped my mind. With rain came a lazy day, a lot spent in
the caravan, reading and watching TV. It was halfway through watching the
excellent ‘Unforgiven’ with Eastwood, Freeman, and Hackman that I realised, too
late, that I hadn’t contributed a single word to the story.
Wrist
slapped.
Day Thirteen – 414 words
This
was the start of Mike’s search for his friend. I took him to a rundown block of
flats and then found myself sticking him in an awkward conversation with some
youths outside the front doors. I don’t know where it came from, or if it will
remain past the draft, but it just fell out of my brain and onto the page.
Day Fourteen – 679 words
Today
was supposed to be a relaxing day, just me and the wife. Unfortunately our childminder
thought it was the best time to hand in her notice. The day quickly disintegrated
into two angry parents and the search for somewhere to send my son in four
weeks.
Despite
this hiccup, I still managed to get a little writing done before we headed off
for a much needed drink at our weekly pub quiz.
At
the end of the last chapter, Mike was trapped in an unfurnished flat with nowhere
to hide, and someone was knocking on the open door. The ‘visitors’ are revealed
and I think my brain went in two directions at the same time. One ‘visitor’ is
an earlier character who, in a twist, is not all that they seemed. And the
other? Well I leave that for now, but I think it’s going to change. I know the ‘Chris
and Mike vs’ stories are weird, but this might be too weird. We’ll see.
Day Fifteen – 587 words
Another
car scene, another argument between our future monster hunters. This is another
scene that may exit the final version, or perhaps merge with another chapter.
But for now, it has information that I needed to get down somewhere, so what
better place than a first draft.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the middle of the story was
the thinnest but I’m confidant that momentum will give me more words per day as
I get closer to the ending. It’s the most complete stage of planning seeing as
it’s where the original Flash Fiction tale was set.
I’m trying to focus more on the ‘Chris And Mike vs’ project
going forward and so, with a heavy heart, I’ve made the decision to put
Fractured Dawn on hiatus. It’s not over, but even getting it done at a
fortnightly pace with the other writing I do is causing a little stress. I need
a little more focus and so something had to go. I have three more parts to post
that lead into a nice point in the story to break, a kind of end of season one
episode cliff-hanger.
It’s not over. Fractured Dawn will be back.
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