Under a Gibbous Moon

I’ve put in a huge push on my novel in the last two days. I had fallen far behind to to my accident. In the last 48 hours I’ve written 7,824 words more words. This brings me to a grand total of 43,037 words. I have less than 7K words left until I reach the 50K word mark.

This would not be a problem except that I have exactly ONE (1) chapter left to write. Not only is it just one measly chapter but it is only one scene. It is the epilogue. Now the prologue for the novel clocked it at just slightly over 1K words so I don’t think that there is any way to stretch this out to 7K. I would say at best I might get 2K words out of it leaving me with a finished novel somewhere around 45K words.

At that point I’m going to have to figure out what I’m going to do next. Do I go back an add in additional scenes? Expand upon what I have already written?

At the very least, I will finish the epilogue tomorrow which will leave me with at least 5 days to figure it out. I feel at least moderately confident that I will be able to scrape together something.

In about ten minutes it will be the 15th of November and National Novel Writing Month will be half over. I have also reached a bit over the half way mark. As the 14 comes to a close I have written 25,466 words.

It has been interesting journey so far. According to the spreadsheet that they give you to keep track of your progress I have spent about 28 hours working on my novel. It has been harding going at points. There was a three day stretch that I did not manage to write a single word and there was one day that I wrote almost 5,000.

Even though I had the entire thing outlined from the beginning, it has managed to take twists and turns that not even I anticipated. I can say that reaching the halfway mark I am very confident that I will manage to reach at least 50,000 words by the end of the month. I don’t think that it will get much easier but I do have a rhythm now that keeps me going.

The last 15 days have definitely been a worthwhile experience. I imagine that the next 15 days will prove interesting too.

I got exactly nothing accomplished on my novel yesterday. As bad as it sounds, I just didn’t feel like it. I think it is bad when something that is supposed to be fun starts to feel like an obligation. Therefore, I decided to take today off. I did not write anything for my novel, I didn’t even think about it.

I’m far enough ahead that I am in no danger of falling behind. Tomorrow I’m going to work on expanding a couple of scenes to get my words-per-scene up to where I think that they need to be.

I will finish this.

Participants in the National Novel Writing Month claim that they do it for the love of literature and writing. They say that they do it for the challenge of trying to craft a novel in only 30 short days.

The Real truth is, though something much darker:

Mmmmm... Chocolate

We do it for the free chocolate bar :)

Two days in, and I’ve put almost 8,000 words to page. Here is the prologue:

A dark shadow fell across Spring Hill Road. A dark inky blackness that not even the moon above could penetrate. It wound its way sinuously, creeping from side to side extinguishing the streetlights as it passed and casting the street further into darkness. A deathly chill crept followed in the shadows wake, a mist forming in the deserted street.

A figure stepped out of the darkness, moving swiftly along the sidewalk, the figure kept to the shadow as if it where his own. Halfway down the street he stopped in front of a house. Continue reading “Excerpt from The Devourer of Flesh and Bone” »