Almost celebrating...

On Friday evening, when I was travelling down to London for a weekend of frolics with friends, I crossed the NaNo finish line, ending my journey with 50,023 words. While this is certainly a cause for celebration, the story isn't yet complete, and that's what my real goal is. I can't stop now. I think I'm over halfway through the story (though it might be surprise me and be longer or shorter than I expect...), so am beginning the downhill section. I've got a bottle of pink champagne waiting in the fridge for the day I type 'The End', and set myself a revised deadline of December 31st. I'll update my word counter to show the target as 100,000 words tomorrow, but until then, I'm enjoying having it look like I've finished!

Confused...

I am seriously obsessive about backing up my work. My NaNo WIP is currently on my laptop, my work PC (so that I can work on it at lunch-time, never during the working day... Honest.), and a memory stick. Also, whenever I finish a chapter, I copy it into a new Google Document and also into Scrivener, the novel-writing package I have on my laptop. I'll be using this to edit it once I've finished the first draft, as it is much more flexible than Word, which is what I'm using for NaNo.

The Scrivener project stats tells you lots of things on top of just a simple word count, including how many paperback pages you have written, and this is what I've generally checked when I've added a new chapter. I copied in Chapters 17 and 18 this morning, and happened to also notice the word count for the project. In Word, I had reached 37,801, as you can see today in my word counter bar. When I looked at the Scrivener word count it said 37,910! I really don't understand the discrepancy, and am inclined to believe the Word total with the belief that it's better to get to 50,000 then realise I've actually done more when I validate it on the NaNo site than the reverse, but it still makes the scientist in me slightly nervous. Which one is right?! There is a discrete total of words (unless there's something funny going on with hyphenations or contractions) and I want to know what it is! Argh!

70%

With 35,026 words and lots of ideas left to write, I think this might be the best November ever, despite not making it down to Lewes for Bonfire Night. Again.

50%

After 8 and a bit days, I have hit the halfway milestone - I now have 25,052 words! This has been a fairly crazy week, with furious typing occupying every free moment I've had, but I've absolutely loved it. Blogging has suffered a bit, but I think that's only natural.

This has been a real learning experience for me, and I've found it rather liberating. I'm such a scientist, I like being really accurate, but I've made myself set this story in fictional places so that isn't such a thing as accurate - they're all only in my head. I can go back and change things later if I decide to do things differently, but for the first draft it's much more important to just get the words down.

Right, I need some coffee, and then it's back to the grindstone!

Name change?

After this weekend of frantic activity (12,258 words so far, and I think I've got a few left in me before bed), my 'lazy' credentials are severely tarnished. If this continues, I may have to rename the blog, but 'hard-working perfectionist' just sounds rather dull, and not at all like me. Oh well, I'm sure when I get back into the office tomorrow, my momentum will falter, but with a start like this I don't really have any excuse for not finishing the 50,000 words this year!

Reward

Having already exceeded my target for the weekend (I'm at 11,082 words now!), I'm off to the pub for a well-deserved lunch.

More writing when I get back, and I'm hoping my characters will lead me to write even more unexpected things, following the creation of a feminist fairy-tale earlier today, which my main character told her daughter as a bedtime story!

Day 1 total

I had a good day yesterday. I think I've broken my previous record for number of words written in a day quite easily, and don't entirely know if I can keep up the momentum. But I can only try.

My total for the day was:

8,215 words!

Progress

So far, 291 words, but I've just had to shut Word down for some updates to install. Annoying! But, security is important... And this is a good excuse to go and make a cup of coffee!

And they're off!

I am just about to start NaNo. All my preparation have been made, and I'm raring to go. My nails are short for ease of typing, all the books I might need for reference are around me, and Word is opening up as I type. I also have a big pile of fruit for when it's going well and I'm feeling virtuous, and a big pile of junk food, which I probably won't need for the bad times... I also have a big keyboard hooked up to my laptop to save my wrists.

So, without further ado, 'Once upon a time...'