A month later. I certainly did get sucked into the NaNo vortex. And I’m proud to report that I won, with a grand total of words over 50,000, including a tacked-on ending. (Your NaNo book should technically have a beginning, middle, and end. I’m still missing quite a bit of latter middle, though.) But this is no return to the normal world, as has been the custom for my last several Decembers. No rest for the possessed. You see, I want to keep going. I feel like these characters and this town deserve to have their story continued while it’s still on fire in my easily distractable (distractible?) brain. But what to do? The NaNoWriMo site is still active but is no longer accepting words– the game is over for another year.
I’m going to make this my new wordcount logging site. There’s something about being able to put your latest numbers up someplace after a writing session (or occasionally in the middle of one). Rejoice, gentle readers– you’ll be witness to the daily current wordcount of not just one novel but two: The Shadow over Portsmouth (only a working title), this year’s NaNo project, and a book called Player Choice (also only a working title), which has been in the works for, well, a long time and has been subject to frequent grinding halts, including the most recent halt that occurred on October 31 at approximately 10:49 pm.
Player Choice is the one that I’ve long regarded as the most probable candidate for my first fiction book to be published. It has, however, been dragging for a while. Benjamin has demanded to see a draft by Christmas Day or else daily harassments will begin. (I’ve made a similar demand of him for a draft of his novel in progress, Ar– whoops, almost dropped a secret there with the title. He may not be willing to put it out in the open yet.) So in essence, another game has begun, at least as far as Player Choice goes. A smart fellow would concentrate his energies entirely on Player Choice in December, yes? And leave The Shadow over Portsmouth for later.
I have this crazy idea, though, that I can do both. (It might have something to do with having a rather light freelancing schedule right now.) So folks, without further ado, here’s our starting wordcounts, at 12:00 pm on December 1:
The Shadow over Portsmouth: 51, 327
Player Choice: 100,410
Now you might look at that latter number and say “Holy crap, you’ve already got a whole pile of words for Player Choice— time to wade in there and start cutting!” But I already know for a fact that about 25,000 of those are destined to be deleted. So we need some more bulk beforehand to make up for that impending gouge. An ending to the book, for example, would really be helpful.
Onward!
This is a great endeavor! I applaud you, and also will be taking some inspiration from this log…
Write on!