I did it! In the end, I didn’t quite reach 65,000. I stopped at 61+.
What did I learn? In no particular order:
- Plotting really helps and allows you to focus on telling the story instead of wondering what’s going to happen next.
- Writing a couple of hours every day you can get a lot done.
- Notes – on plot points, locations and characters – really help you keep track of where you are.
- Microsoft Word is not the only writing tool.
My novel isn’t quite a fully formed object of beauty. There are a couple of threads that need to be tied up and a couple of leads that went nowhere. One or two of my characters are probably redundant and there’s an entire plot thread that I forgot to write. (Yes. Forgot.) That’s OK. The thing will sit in my Dropbox for the next couple of months before I look at it again and decide whether I want to edit it into shape. I might. Or I might not.
The purpose of this month was to write a lot on more or less the same topic. I did and what I produced is a lot more coherent than what I wrote last year, so it feels like positive progression. Now, I’ll glory in my achievement for a day or two and get back to editing the stories that I left on a shelf on Octber 31st.