You may have noticed my plan to post every week with updates on how I was doing fell through. You may be concerned, since it’s now the last day of November and that means my novel should be done. Is it?

Yes. Yes in the way that it is over 70,000 words and 35 chapters and isn’t missing any vital bits from A to Z except a few chapter titles. Of course now it requires editing with a sword (and then a butcher knife and then a paring knife). So YAY!!!

As you may recall, I’ll be taking December off to regroup (and give myself some distance) before beginning to edit in January. I figured December would be too busy anyway. Plus this will let me play with some of the ideas that thrust themselves upon me while I was diligently working on my Nano project.

I wish I could sit back and relax. But you know me.

We are officially half way through the month of November and by association Nanowrimo. For those participating, that means they should have 25,000 words. For me, I don’t have any set number, but something tells me I should be a little further along than I am.

Just over two weeks left and I have over 8 chapters to write, which is about 16,000 words (I aim each chapter to be roughly 2,000 words). It’s probably closer to 20,000 if I include all the chunks I’m missing in text.

I succeeded in my previous weeks goals and now have the rest of the story plotted out and one of the chapters written. However, in order to finish in time, I’m going to need to up the amount of work I’m doing daily and spend more time thinking about CL than I have been. No pressure.

My goals for the next week:

• Finish all back chapters and missing sections

• Write two new sections

I’m a little worried that I won’t be able to get things done in time. Just gotta work harder!

I really did mean to post yesterday. In fact, over the course of the day, I thought several times, “I have to do my blog post tonight.” But as I headed home I got an awful headache, so I watched Rent, which made me cry and did nothing to help the headache. So I curled up and did some light reading. My headache is mostly gone, though I imagine it’ll be back by tonight.

I was not as productive as I would have liked with my Nano project. It seems that once I put myself to the task of working on one novel, four different ideas would all like their chance to shine. I’m being good and only writing down notes for them, but still, it’s a distraction. I think I’ve figured out their ages and how that will change to make it less uncomfortable for the readers, and I have some scenes planned in a vague sense. I’m not sure where to end exactly. Do I resolve everything? Do I just have it set up for resolution with the assumption that everything is resolved? I’m leaning toward the latter because politics isn’t my thing.

Also, I’ve realized two points in my writing that need major work, so I’m hoping to fix them: 1. Loose language. I’ve gotten so caught up in getting the story across that I’ve begun losing the fun of telling the story. My language has become mediocre, boring and repetitive. My next major project will be creating a novella that institutes more creative language. 2. Relationships over Plot. Relationships fascinate me, so I’ve been doing more writing that involves studying them than much plot aside from the basics. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this in itself, but I think I’ve been doing it so much that my writing has soured of it. I need to re-freshen my angles.

My goals for the week:

• write one scene; and

• plot out plot to the end.

That’s it for now.

As I previously reported, I am not participating in Nanowrimo, at least not properly. My novel from last year, Clockwork Lives, has sat unfinished on my laptop for the year, with me prodding it a few times when I didn’t have any other stories in progress. So, the plan is to work on CL this year for Nano, finishing up the scenes I skipped and concluding the story (since my resolution didn’t resolve like I was expecting it to last November).

My initial plan was to work on my laptop since it was once again working after some bad spots this summer. I wrote most of CL on my lappy and it seemed fitting. It also helps me avoid distractions (like…blogs). However, yesterday, when I sat down to read through last year’s work, my laptop refused to boot. AWESOME. Thankfully I have a backup of the story, and I don’t think it’s too outdated, so I’m now working off that. I don’t think there is much that is on my computer that is desperately needed to be saved, but who knows. Still planning on getting that fixed.

I hope to give an update on my progress at the beginning of each week. This week is obviously day one. Today I read through the entire story, making small edits and tracking some facts I’d forgotten (appearances) and some that need changed (ages, which were originally true to the era, but will need fixed to make it marketable).

My goals for this week are:

• sketch out an ending;
• write at least some new content; and
• re-do ages.

Three small goals. Let’s see how it goes! See you all next week.