Author: Samuel Johnston

• Writing Time: 01:15
• Session Word Count: 1691
• Total Word Count: 17868 (16667 par)

Today my characters were hanging out in the fishing village, talking with a bunch of unnamed characters that won’t come back into the story after this part. I did introduce a couple of minor named characters in the town who might have more to do before the story is over.

The main characters are in this port town to try to figure out what’s happening on some nearby islands, and possibly find a way to sneak onto the islands to investigate the prison there. In the process of working out how they might do that, I wrote some hints that there are goods being shipped out to the islands in the dead of night, but otherwise left the inhabitants of this village clueless about the islands.

At the end of my session, I looked at some of the notes I had about upcoming parts, and I realized I already had notes about this — they mentioned a ferry out to the islands and directly contradicted what I had already written. That simpler option really appeals to me, because I was already thinking about all of the plot hoops I’d have to jump through to get the characters on the islands. The problem wasn’t that it would be hard to write, I just didn’t think it would be very interesting.

If I were just writing at my own pace, I’d probably want to go back and make changes to what I had just written. During NaNoWriMo, I’m more inclined to leave it as-is and just add some notes about what I’d like to change. I can continue with the story as though I had made the change. The downside to that is that I’ve now got a “broken” story. The upside is that it doesn’t slow me down until revisions.

• Writing Time: 01:30
• Session Word Count: 1687
• Total Word Count: 16177 (15000 par)

Today, my main characters arrived by train at a fishing village. They met two old people, one friendly, one grumpy, both of whom will probably not come into the rest of the story. Still, I was pleased with the little bits of characterization I did for them.

I also realized today that I have much more backstory for one of my main characters than the other. He is the title character and a core element of what got me excited about this story, whereas the other character has less to do. The Watson to his Sherlock, although hopefully not nearly as much of a bystander as Watson usually is. I need to work on developing that character more.

I finished this day in two different writing sessions, and it did feel much easier to hit my word count by splitting it up like that. Unfortunately, I think the different sessions will also have slightly different tones and will have to be adjusted in revision.

• Writing Time: 01:50
• Session Word Count: 1677
• Total Word Count: 14491 (13333 par)

Today, my characters went on a journey by train, so I spent some time thinking about trains and their amenities. Is it reasonable to have semi-fancy sleeper cars with private bathrooms on a steampunk steam engine? I guess so. It’s somewhere between the old west and Amtrak, which is quite a bit of space to work in.

Moving the story to a new location without a detailed outline comes with the awkwardness of logistics, getting characters to the places they need to be for the story to continue, while making it all flow nicely. Since I didn’t do much prep, I needed to spend some time expanding the world—not just in landscape, but in history and culture.

So far, they’ve been in a city loosely based on London. Now they’re heading north, with the eventual goal of traveling to some islands off the coast. This new area is loosely based on Northern Ireland, with a few hints at some civil strife that mirrors the history of that area.  It’s also a place with a distinctive look that I can use to easily come up with setting descriptions.

The nice thing about this kind of setting shorthand is that it lets me continue writing quickly. I’ve already got a lot of built-in connections and images in my head. The downside is that those connections and images are mostly real world or overused tropes, so I’ll want to go back in revisions and decide how to change the settings and make them more interesting and unique.

NaNoWriMo is a great reminder that you don’t have to be inspired to write. A lot of writing is just putting words on the page, regardless of how you feel. Often, if you come back later, it’s hard to tell what writing came from the “inspired” sessions and which ones were a struggle. I didn’t feel particularly inspired tonight, but I’m happy with my progress.

• Writing Time: 01:55
• Session Word Count: 1946
• Total Word Count: 12814 (11667 par)

It’s the end of the first week. I happened to have the day off today, so I was able to sleep in and get my writing done early and without rushing. Much more relaxing than yesterday.

NaNoWriMo is a distilled, compressed writing experience, and you can think of it just like a novel. The first week to the beginning, the central two weeks to the middle, and the last week to the end. Whether or not you actually try to cover the entire plot of a novel in the month, the process still maps pretty well, in my experience.

In the classic emotional arc of novel writing, week one is the fun, creative time where you’re free to invent and discover. Everything is new and shiny. In week two and three, the experience begins to dull, as you have to build a functional story on the foundations of character, setting and plot. In the final week, the end is in sight, and even if all the components of the book aren’t exactly coming together, you can at least take solace in the fact that the pain will be over soon.

Most books have at least a few moments in the process of writing when doubt or frustration crop up. Sometimes a book feels like a disaster in progress. The general agreement seems to be that those moments usually come in the middle, not so much at the beginning or end. So the start of week two begins to usher in the part of the month where a lot of the struggle happens. I’ve certainly felt that in previous years. We’ll see how it goes this time around.

Following up my previous post, I wanted to mention that you can actually add updates for specific days and/or delete updates on the NaNoWriMo website. You just have to do it from the “stats” page. This is nice for someone like me, who writes late at night and occasionally goes over midnight. Now I can make sure my word count applies to the right day.

• Writing Time: 01:50
• Session Word Count: 1676
• Total Word Count: 10868 (10000 par)

Tonight was a rough one. I didn’t feel like writing, and it felt slow, even if it did end up being pretty on-pace compared to my previous sessions.

On the upside, I crossed 10,000 words. On the downside, I updated my count on the website one minute after midnight. Now I don’t think I’m going to get that “Daily Par Every Day” badge. And…sure, it’s just a stupid graphic on a website. It doesn’t really matter. But, assuming all goes well, I’m going to get to the end of the month and all those badges will light up like a Christmas tree. Except that one. Because I was one minute late. Oh well.

The actual book is going fine. Thanks to the 10,000 words I already had done before November, I’m approaching the end of Act I.

• Writing Time: 01:45
• Session Word Count: 2117
• Total Word Count: 9192 (8333 par)

My strategy so far has been to write a paragraph or two beyond my “par” word count each day. This doesn’t feel like much, but I’m now about 850 words ahead. At this rate, I’ll have a spare day of wiggle room around Day 9. I also have some vacation later in the month, and I may use that to pad my word count a little further. That way if something comes up or I just feel burned out, I can afford to take a day off, or write a little less.

I wrote in two sessions today. The first was a bit of a slog. It was a lot of physical action as one character pursues another in a crowded building. I had to figure out exactly what each of them was doing, as well as the layout of the building. The second session was about twice as productive, and was mostly dialogue after the chase.

If I have anything like a hack for getting your NaNoWriMo word count, it’s this: use lots of dialogue. Dialogue is such a fast way to write a lot, and it’s a great way to develop characters, especially if you’re still trying to figure those characters out as you’re writing.

In my experience, most of the difficulties with dialogue come with editing it, once you realize you have unnecessary bits or need to rearrange things. Since dialogue has a natural flow to it, changing one thing can have a lot of knock-on effects. Luckily, that’s not a concern during NaNoWriMo. That’s a problem for future me!

• Writing Time: 01:40
• Session Word Count: 1797
• Total Word Count: 7075 (6667 par)

I’m going to say something that probably seems obvious to writers who call themselves “pantsers” or “gardeners”—those who don’t plan/outline/prep extensively before starting a big writing project like a novel.

Having a very loose outline for this project has been…fun? I have more flexibility to just discover new ideas or characters and immediately weave them in. I have a few plot points I want to hit, and I can meander between them as much as I want.

The other thing I’ve noticed, not slavishly following a detailed outline, is that I’m writing faster. My recent point of comparison, of course, is Razor Mountain.

I spent something like a year and a half writing the “first draft” of Razor Mountain. I put “first draft” in quotes, because I was working from the most detailed outline I’ve ever made, and each chapter went through at least one round of edits (and often several) before I posted it. I wanted the story to be coherent and relatively free of plot holes, because I knew people would be reading it while I was writing it.

The downside is that I am now finished with that “first draft,” and I still need to edit and revise. I’m still going to end up cutting some things out and adding new things, along with lots of smaller edits. A better first draft is still a first draft, and some of the effort that went into making it better will be thrown away when those sections are cut or modified.

My weekly output during Razor Mountain was about equal to my daily par for NaNoWriMo. I will be writing the equivalent of 45% of Razor Mountain in November. Call it half of a first draft. But it’s going to be a much messier first draft. How much more will need to be rewritten or thrown away to make it good? I don’t know. Is it better to blast through that first draft as quickly as possible, knowing that it means more editing later?

The other aspect that I’ve been thinking about is sustainability. I accepted my slow cadence of two chapters per month on Razor Mountain because I decided I could keep it up indefinitely. My past experience with NaNoWriMo is that I’m usually pretty worn out at the end of November.

On the other hand, at this pace I could finish the first draft of a novel in two or three months. Even if I had quite a bit of revising to do, I could spend a year doing that and still finish faster than my Razor Mountain pace.

As usual, I’m probably over-thinking everything. After all, it’s only Day 4.

• Writing Time: 01:05
• Session Word Count: 1708
• Total Word Count: 5278 (5000 par)

The words continue to come pretty quickly. Along with my main character, I’ve gotten to introduce a couple of interesting secondary characters. The second major character will enter the story in my Day 4 writing session. I initially thought that these two would be very buddy-buddy, but now I’m thinking that some tension between them would give me more opportunities to keep things interesting.

I am starting to enjoy and feel more comfortable with peeling back the layers of the world. I’m not terribly familiar with steampunk or its various punky offshoots, and I’m still figuring out what real world time period(s) and place(s) to draw from. I began with the default: Victorian England, but now I’m thinking about adding some more Eastern European elements into the mix. For now, I’m happy to pull in a mish-mash, even if they’re a bit anachronistic together, and see how it works out.

I’m also delighted to make it to Friday and catch up on some sleep.

• Writing Time: 01:50
• Session Word Count: 1717
• Total Word Count: 1717 (1667 par)

As is pretty normal for me, I was not as prepared as I had hoped to be. Life has been busy lately. I went into November with something more like a story summary than a scene-by-scene outline. But that’s fine.

Unfortunately, November 1 was a Wednesday this year, which might just be the worst day to start NaNoWriMo. Much better when it lands on a weekend. Ideally, Halloween would fall on a Friday or Saturday, and I could stay up late and do a little bit of midnight writing to kick things off.

As it was, I had to work all day and save my writing for the evening. I didn’t actually start writing until kids were in bed. Still, I started this year with the advantage of jumping into a story 10,000 words in. I already have a main character that I know something about, and some pre-existing tone and setting to build from.

The last time I participated in NaNoWriMo was before I had started this blog, and before I had started Razor Mountain. Before that, I was…inconsistent. I can definitely feel the difference, now that I’m in the habit of writing on a regular basis. 6-7 pages in a day is still a lot for me, but by not worrying too much about quality, I was able to bang it out in less than two hours.

In short, Day 1 went well, and I’m already tired and looking forward to the weekend.