Drawing from the Well
I DID IT!
I’m still riding high from winning NaNoWriMo. I’ve tried a couple times before and, as we covered prior to November 1, the best I ever did before was 29k (which is still outstanding). But this year, I won. I spent 24 days behind pace, but I didn’t let that get me down. I just got into my story, kept writing above daily pace, and avoided zero days, and I eventually caught up. It feels so good.
On top of that, I completely finished the first draft of one of the five character arcs for Book 3. I’m attacking the arcs one at a time so I can focus and stay in flow with characters I know and am learning better as I right. Switching between the POVs while drafting feels counterproductive. It worked in November, so we’re going to keep going with that.
That is, we’re going to keep going with that WHEN I return to drafting. The arc I drafted during NaNoWriMo was doable because there weren’t too many characters that were new that I needed to know well. There was one that I’ll need to review in editing, but three of the remaining four arcs have too many new characters to write at the moment. So, I’m going back to character profiles. I’ve already finished one and almost finished all the major characters introduced in the first two books. I plan on working on these every day until I finish all 23 of them (I cut one because I didn’t need a full profile for them). After that, it’s side characters, which should be relatively quick, and then we’re back to drafting. I’ll keep you posted.
80/229 scenes completed
50,846 words
14/23 Major Character Profiles completed
0/89 Side Character Profiles completed
Filling the Well
I’ve had a successful reading week this last week (I know it’s been 9 days since my last post; it’s ok). I finished The Emperor’s Soul (great!) and The Hope of Elantris (fine) to close out the written works related to Sanderson’s Elantris. This was a great first step into the Cosmere and I look forward to Mistborn. Beyond that, I finished Failed Future by Elise Kova which was fantastic. I’m devouring the next book, Sovereign Sacrifice already. I also read the Vortex Visions bonus scene…which kind of spoiled the ending but not totally so it’ll be ok. I’m on the last row for hitting my Bookworm goal so I’m stoked to finish that out. I might jump back into A Song of Ice and Fire after I hit the mark to take me into 2022. I want to finish those books, but they’re a bit of a slog so far. I hope that A Storm of Swords is better than the first two books in that regard, but I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in that. Martin’s style is intrigue and slog.
96/100 for #ProjectBookworm2021
Well Chat
I already covered part of my NaNo journey in the writing section because it was super exciting. The big thing I wanted to talk about here is how drafting felt.
Beginnings are always hardest for me, both in reading and writing. Beginnings of series books beyond the first are easier because the “starting point” stands on the tail of the previous book. This book, however, starts in such a difficult place for the characters that it was almost as hard for me as the beginning of Book 1. I knew WHERE to start it, where I HAD to start it, but it was a hard place and I wanted to do it right. I’ve written it now and it definitely needs some work and LOTS of polish, but it’s started. From there, the storylines splinter out after that which allowed me to focus in. I wrote some chapters for each of the three arcs that were intertwined at the start.
Then it got interesting. I focused on one particular arc, one on which I had done a lot of planning work to develop the world building. This gave me a lot of familiarity with that “world” so I dove in. And I fell in love with how much culture I had built into this one country, this one large, dynamic, diverse group of people. So I just followed that rabbit hole and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I even adjusted some of the scenes to offer more description so that what was about to happen would make sense. It gave me a lot of words and this is likely the densest storyline in the book. Wait, there’s that other one…oh and his…okay, maybe not. This is going to be a big book, okay?
Before the outset, I looked at how my word count changed from Book I (90k) to Book II (131k). This works out to about 45k per character arc (2 in I and 3 in II). That means with FIVE arcs in Book III, I expect it to come out to 225k eventually. Since I tend to be an overwriter (we’ll talk about that next week), the first draft will probably come in about 250k. My projection spreadsheet points to 128k but I don’t by it. I’ve only written about a third of the scenes and there’s a lot of world-building left to do on some of those arcs. I’m not concerned about the projection. That’s all it is, after all: a guess. It’ll all turn out just as it should by the end. For now, I’m basking in the joy of finishing and winning NaNo and planning for the months ahead where we finish drafting.
P.S. I also tested out editing on my ReMarkable yesterday and absolutely love it. That is definitely where I will do at least my first two rounds of editing which is going to save A LOT of paper. It’ll be sad not to have the tangible product to file away, but, truly, it’s a lot of paper. I’m excited for the next couple of steps in the process and look forward to getting to and through them. See you next week!
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG