Numbers)
A month ago I committed to each day outlining two scenes and writing 500 words of my novel With the Beast. All told, for the month of May I succeeded for 19 days or 61% of the days. However, because writing 500 words was my minimum, most of the days where I did write I penned considerably more. My total word output for the month was 13,088 words, or 84% of what I would have had if I only wrote 500 words each day.
Those 13,088 words get added to 1,632 that I previously wrote for an earlier blog post to bring my draft total up to 14,720 words.
Insights)
All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. That level of success is actually pretty good for when I start a new endeavor. When I first started this blog I only managed to write about half of the days, and then I would cram double-writing into the others. Over time I found how to pace things out more smoothly with the blog, and expect that I will with the novel as well.
Actually I don’t ever expect to ever get up to writing for 100% of the days in a month. Maybe if it was my full-time job, but it’s not, and frankly I’d say 80% or more would be pretty ideal. I’ve also determined that when I do miss a day to just let it go, unlike when I started this blog. Trying to make up for missed sessions by writing double the next day is a sure way to make me hate the whole process.
It’s Huge!)
One last realization has to do with that word total: 14,720. My very rough estimate is the portion that I have written is about 1/20 of the total story. That would have the finished novel clock in at 300,000 words, which is more than double what I want it to be. I suppose this is a good thing, better to have too much and pare it down then to have to little and try to inflate it. But it does mean a long process just to get this first draft. That’s okay, just it’s definitely given me a healthy dose of reality!
Give Me Pen and Paper 