Saturday, November 21, 2015

NaNoWriMo: Week 3

by
Scott D. Parker

Like Week 2, Week 3 just kept the momentum going. I actually increased the word count over Week 2 but still didn’t match Week 1.

Week 1    16087
Week 2    12096
Week 3    15769

I'm up to 43,952 words. I did a quick comparison of the novel I wrote back in August and realized I reached 50K in that novel in 22 days. I have to write 6,048 words tomorrow (i.e., today when you’re reading this) in order to match that record. That’s not going to happen. After I do tomorrow’s word count, I’ll be preparing for a speech I’m giving at church on Sunday and starting the Great Star Wars Re-watch ahead of the new Star Wars movie next month. But, unlike the August Novel which took me until the middle of September to complete, I aim to finish this book by month's end. It'll definitely be north of 50,000. I just don't know by how much.

The neatest thing I did this week was visit Bayou Bend yesterday. A few scenes of this second Gordon Gardner book take place at the Ima Hogg (yes, real name) manor in the heart of Houston. It’s now a museum and open every day except Monday. I spoke to a librarian and she gave me the titles of a few books I can use for research. I’ll be returning next week to tour the entire property and bring some good historical research to the novel.

The biggest writing challenge this week was having to brainstorm part of the middle section in which I find myself. I’m an outliner, but I also allow the nuances of storytelling to steer me along my pre-determined course. That happened this week. I spent almost all my daytime writing time doing the brainstorming, leaving me to start the daily writing after 9pm. That is not my standard operating procedure, but I got it done. Much happier writing at 5am than 9 or 10pm.

How are your NaNoWriMo projects going?

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