[Update] NaNoWriMo 2011

It's week three of NaNo and I'm still on schedule of making it to that 50,000 words on the last day of November! Huzzah! If I'm being really honest with you, I'm really proud of myself. I write this the day before it is published on my blog, so it's Thursday, and I just cracked 35,000 words. Thirty-five thousand! I have a hard time believing that I've already written so many words, especially when I think of last year and the fact that I basically gave up after writing 20k.


Even though my wordcount is still going up almost every day, it's not as easy as it was in the beginning when the month started. I have an outline, sure, but I found mistakes in the outline so I had to figure out how to fix it before I could continue. And yes, I know that you can call that an outline fail.

But even with the pieces of the outline that were good, I would have problems implementing certain stuff that had to happen in order to make the plot work. It's hard, I'm not going to lie. The most difficult are the transition scenes that take me from one important part to another. I constantly feel stupid when I write the really simple stuff and when I read it back (which I tend to avoid for exactly this reason) I feel even worse. It's not interesting enough for me, but I have to keep going because I am the kind of person who can get stuck on something like a dinner conversation that doesn't contribute to the plot or the development of the characters.

When I look at Twitter and the message boards I'm active on, I feel like I'm one of the few who is still going. I'm not even exaggerating - the people I started writing with (from various forums) on November 1st have all stopped writing, with a few exceptions. I will keep writing anyway, but it would have been nice to have some more fellow writers around me :) So let me know if you're still going!

So.. How is my story getting along? Well, slowly but surely I'm getting to the exciting parts of the book which means I get to write ACTION SCENES!! *woopwoop!* There hasn't been much action in the beginning of the story, mostly build-up so to say (with a scene that made me cry while writing it), but the next couple of thousand words are going to make up for it. Action, adventure.. Excitement! YES! As you can see, I'm very excited to get to that part. I feel like it will be easier for me to write, because everything has a purpose. I don't do well on stuff that doesn't lead anywhere in the story.

That said, I am at 35k and I'm at almost 50% of my outline, which means that if I keep going like this, my book will need 80k - 90k to be complete (my outline isn't complete yet - I'm missing the ending). That's a LOT of words. I won't be able to write them all during November, but I'll just keep writing in December with what I've already written before.

That's all for my update this week :) Let me know if you're still going - we can cheer each other on! Maybe you won't make it to 50k (I'm still not convinced I could actually make it this year), but you started the story that's been in your head for a while. You've written words. Most of all, you're surrounded by people who are also struggling to get the words on paper - or the screen. We're all in the same boat! And every word written, is a word won - because you wouldn't have written it if you weren't participating in NaNo. I firmly believe that!

Write on, Wrimos!! *sends the good writing vibes*