Skip to main content

NaNoWriMo 2017... Working the Numbers

Hello all!

National Novel Writers Month is coming up in November and this is the time of the year where I like to start plotting out my goals for that month!

First off, although we are given a full month to complete our 50K word project, reality has proven (time and again) that this author really has about 25 days to make it happen. That works out to a clean 2,000 words a day to hit the goal.

(I aim for the 2,200 to plan for the burn-out / sickness / to-do-list days)

Secondly, This year is going to be different from other years. NaNoWriMo is a time for me to play around in new arenas. I try different genres, or new story arcs. This year I'm sticking to the Greenshore world. It's been too much fun plotting and writing out the first five books of the series and that is where my brain naturally goes to.

Third, in writing the Greenshore books, I've got Book 1 down to beta reader edits and Book 2 at a VERY rough draft of 27,000 words. My plan for NaNoWriMo is to hammer out Books 3 & 4 to hit the rough draft word count of 25,000-ish words (each). With the plotting done, that's about 2 chapters a day in writing. That equates to roughly 1,000 words per chapter.

I try to treat each chapter like it's own short story, thus the need to play the roll of a 'planner'. The month of October is going to see me wandering through the individual bullet points that I've created for each chapter, changing those points into workable plans for writing. This also works out to roughly 2 chapters a day for October.

Finally, there is the element of TIME. I'm an early morning keyboard and coffee kind of author who has roughly 2 hours to hammer out each day. That works out to about 17 words per minute to hit the 2,000 word / day goal. It sounds WAAAAaaaaaayyyyy easy, right?

-Dave

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FLOODED (with ideas)

Had a storm two weeks ago. Basement attempted to turn into a pool. We won this battle... The up side is that I got inspired to get off of my butt and begin REALLY  working on a RPG rule set for the whole Greenshore book series. It's something I've been kicking around for the past year or so, but I've been putting all my writing energy into the first three books, plotting the series, and filling in an offline wiki with all my Greenshore musings and such. In late August, I gave myself a week to get the framework for the RPG down, if only to have something to play around with in my spare time. With the flood came a desire to simply step out of the normal routine and fully embrace something game-like! The weird thing is, I was also inspired to begin keeping an electronic journal of the day to day along with the writing. Below is the first week of said journal... Design Notes:   Aug 21: Day 3 of creating the Game! After looking over the plans for the book series and al...

Well, that was a fast September...

I swear I just posted on this blog. Really. School starts up for my little one and time kind of takes off on me. Gutting and repainting / trimming out an office space also spins up the temporal chaos as well. However, I am writing each and every a.m. (once the coffee is brewed). Below is a couple of weeks of notes about the RPG design as it muddles along... Sept 5 & 6: More spell development, along with copying over the ‘Fringe Groups’. LOTS of work ahead of me today… Sept 7: Ah, there’s the wall. I felt it coming and blam-o! Here it is. I’ll ignore it today, reminding myself that chipping away at something in this document (or any writing that is currently in process) is better than the murk of guilt that will hit later on if I don’t. Back to the Fringe Groups, then… Oh, I’m thinking of starting to highlight each section I’m working on to denote them as ASHLAND SPECIFIC information … Sept 8: No ‘wall’ today. Kind of driven to write, actually. Thinking about...

Tools 'an Rulez

Welcome! The past couple of weeks have been dedicated to expanding the mystical buffet line. Yep, I've been creating spells and magic items. Why? With nine Core mystical fonts, as well as a number of fringe groups, I feel the presence of a fantasy-authors demon: The Mystic Deux Ex Machina. Got a problem that might screw up the plot? Well your wizard just reaches into the little 'ole black bag of tricks and POOF! Problem solved! See? We don't need to worry about going back and tweaking plot arcs and character development. We certainly do not have to worry about tension in the story! Just magic your way outta the problem. Everyone does it! James Bond has that tech-magic thing Q gave him... Narcissa Malfoy's completely unexpected little lie (see book 7)... A bunch 'o minor characters in the Hobbit bringing BIG change to the world at large... As you can see, it works. Up to a point. My goal is, as I work through books 2-5 (its an arc thing), I want to pre-b...