NaNoWriMo 2016, Week 4 Report
Posted 29 Nov 2016
drafting
Two days left to go, and one more write-in with my group! I'll recap the last two days on Thursday of this week, then the whole NaNoWriMo event for next week's Tuesday post, but here's my update for the past week, Week 4.
Things to celebrate
- Crossed 80,000 words on Wednesday, 11/23.
- Finished the story on Friday, 11/25.
- Sent off a Word file of my draft to my developmental editor, and scheduled our next coaching session for December 1.
Struggles
- The US Thanksgiving holiday put a lot of OCD planning distractions in my brain, but thankfully I was well ahead of where I needed to be in terms of the storyline.
- My goal of 100,000 words may turn out to be a bit high for draft one, but I have no doubt the edited MS will end up there. The 2016 new draft of Flotsam was around 80K, and I'm already well past that and know at least a few things that need to be developed further.
- Caught a throat bug from my husband that took hold on Saturday, so I backed off my aggressive writing schedule a bit to give myself some R&R to better fight it off.
Community Write-Ins
- 2 Writing Events, 8.75 hours total, worth 4026 words.
Asimov Hour
- Asimov Hour, ~5 hours total, worth 5611 words
Daily Session Counts
- 11/22: AH: 50 min 1287; Lunch: 40 min 879 words; Running count: 79,617
- 11/23: AH: 60 min 1821; Running count: 81,438
- 11/24: AH: 55 min 1400; Running count: 82,838
- 11/25: Write-In: 4.75 hr, finished the story by 10:30a, went back and began bulking up a few spots in the intro chapter. 3743 words added. Running count: 86,581
- 11/26: (Retouching) AH: 2 hr 1040 words; Running count: 87,620
- 11/27: Write-In: 4 hr 383; Got total word count for NaNoWriMo, cleaned up my notes and exported a Word Docx file for my editor, and made a Vellum beook for my Kindle to re-read; Running count: 88,003
- 11/28: Back to Ehl'i Landor vignettes. AH: 10 min 33; Lunch: re-read NaNo Draft (got to 24%); Bedtime reading (got to 26%); Running count: 88036
For the first time I have a 'blemish' on my green streak. Since I wrote less than 1,667 words on Thanksgiving day, I earned a yellow square on my calendar graphic. Never mind that I validated as a WriMo Winner four days earlier. :P Earned another on Saturday, after reviewing the notes I'd left for myself only resulted in a net gain of 1000 words and change. Sunday, fixing up the last few changes only netted me 383 words, and that earned me a yellow square. Again: I'm at 88,000+ words. Not going to let those golden tones bother me (they're totally bothering me).
Word-wise, this was not a very eventual fourth week, but well... the draft is done, so there's that. ;)
(Thanks to Lisa, YouTube's LAFreshLife, for the Custom Target spreadsheet shown in the header image)