In Which I Smell Like Victory.

Crossing the finish line is a lot more fun when you can hear your friends cheering for you. Thank you all very much for your support and encouragement!

Which is a 25K Celebration.

This is a celebratory blog post. I'm celebrating reaching the halfway mark in my novel wordcount. Does it faze me that I still have 25,000 words to go and only 10 days to write them in? Heck no! ...Well, okay, maybe. Kinda. Yeah. But I can do it, with the help of my secret weapon Thanksgiving Break.

I know the little counter over on the left is kinda confusing. I think the full length of the stripes with red, and the gray parts of the gray/green stripes, represent the number of words I need to write per day to reach 50K by the end of the month. They keep getting longer because I keep on not reaching that number. It looks like there are several days where I didn't write anything, but that's misleading; I just didn't update my wordcount until after midnight. And that really long gray/green stripe actually includes a lot of words from the previous day, so it's not as impressive as it looks. But the gist of the chart is accurate: I started out reeeaaal slow, and now I have to write like a maniac to catch up.

Part of the reason I got off to such a slow start was that my roommate was moving out. Yes, she has hopped the proverbial fence and moved on to the proverbial greener pastures. I have a new roommate lined up to move in next month. Her blog is broken, or I would link to it. (We'll have to work on that.) In the meantime, I can be as much of a slob as I like. Rest assured I am taking full advantage of this opportunity.

Before I get back to writing this cheesy faux-symbolic dream scene, here is a comic I just read that made me laugh pretty hard. I'm posting a link to it, but it's only for my single friends! Married friends, do not click here.

In Which Another Novel is Begun.

This year's noveling feels very different from previous years'. For one thing, I'm getting off to a slow start, yet not feeling particularly uneasy about it, given that I'll have a lot more unoccupied time later in the month. I used to be such a stickler for the 1667 words per day (2000 if possible!), especially the first week or so. Now, at the end of Day 3, I have less than 3000 words. Ah, well, I'll catch up soon.

For another, I feel fairly relaxed about the story. Everything about it was designed to be easy for me to write, and so far it really has been, aside from a couple sticky "I don't know what happens next" moments. Of course, there will be plenty more of those....

Finally, if I've learned anything from the previous two years of noveling, it's this: specificity is where it's at. Vague, tentative writing is painful to write and painful to read. I now know to commit myself to as many particularities of plot and characterization as I can come up with, as early as possible in the narrative. I spent way too long worrying about writing myself into a corner before learning that it's the corners that give you something to write about. Specificity brings momentum, which brings enthusiasm, which just makes everything a whole lot better.

And now: sleep.