Project WRITEALLTHEWORDS Update

Total Words: 20,536 Camp NaNoWriMo (74,276 total Manuscript)

WIP-pet: (snippet from story) Dene scanned the paper. As he read, each passage opened up memories long since locked away and buried in the deepest recesses of his mind. Memories that only existed in bits and pieces. The more he investigated and those bits began to shuffle and piece themselves together, the more Dene wondered whether he was ready to see the full picture.

Further Research:

• Hydraulic catafalque
• Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

Project WRITEALLTHEWORDS was still slow-going up until yesterday.

I spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the keyboard and only made it to 1800 words or so. Boo.

But later that night, I had an hour window, so I sat down and made just over 1100 words.

Maybe it was a good scene? A character that I hadn’t planned on being in the scene “showed up” so maybe that’s why the words flowed so easily? Either way, just  after 1:30 a.m. I was up to just over 5100 words for the day.

So, along with following the keys of pre-planning scenes, tracking my progress and looking for patterns, and no internet (eep!), I also noticed that I did a few different things yesterday that could account for the upswing in my word count.

• Word sprints: having shorter windows in which to write or purposefully sitting down to write for only an hour then taking a short break made it easier to up my word count. Not sure why, but when I commit to longer periods, I tend to lose momentum and get distracted by the shiny internet
• Writing full-screen: my writing program allows you to work without the distraction of title bars, menus, and other windows. Tuning everything out is like clearing your desk

I’m hoping to hit 5K again today, but it’s been a slow start so far. My fellow writers can relate, I’m sure. Staying up past 2 a.m. writing seems like a good idea at the time…