Writing a Novel: Day 12

Status: Trudging Along
Word Count: 10,061

My pace has slowed down. Having the holiday break has been nice and I've been able to write a lot, but I'm starting to lose focus with my story. It's meandering and the conversations between my characters are putting me to sleep. Seriously. I fell asleep typing last night.

And there are only so many ways for one character to express her annoyance at the other handsome, pompous character. She's exasperated, irriatated, irked and annoyed. Repeat.

Bleh.

I think I am going to take a little time and do a few character sketches so I can really map out who my characters are, where they come from, etc, so I can get a better feel for their personalities and motivations. Right now, they too closely resemble the originial book (I'm writing a modern adaptation). Except that they aren't as cool as the characters in the original book. They're booooring.

The reason I didn't do this earlier is because I was on a deadline. A time crunch. There was no time.

But now I can, because I have a confession to make. I've decided to not stress about finishing my novel by November 30th. Because, as I'm sure you've noticed, there are only four days left until then. Four days and forty thousand words to go. That would equal writing exactly 10,000 words A DAY starting tomorrow.

Which actually really sounds like it'd be fun-- if I didn't have other things to do (that have non-negitiable deadlines and very real consequences for not doing them). So all these very real, very pressing deadlines mean that I can't possibly push them aside for even one day. Real life doesn't stop for creative kinds of things, no matter how much I wish it would.

But don't worry. This definitely does NOT mean that I'm giving up on my novel. I'm plugging away. The new plan is to finish the novel by Christmas. That gives me four weeks. I think I can manage 10,000 words a week.

On the bright side, I have officially written more words on this story than I've ever written on any story before. And I'm exactly one-fifth of the way done! Woo-hoo! I can see the end in sight!