I'm still here!

So it’s the last day of November, and the last day of National Novel Writing month!

How did I do?

Well, at first glance, not so well.  My word count as of yesterday evening (ok I know I technically have today too, but I’m not working on the novel today for the sake of a different project which will be revealed soon!) was 28,974.

So that’s an increase of 13,456, which doesn’t seem a huge amount.  Certainly I am nowhere near finishing the first draft; I’m not even half way through the story.

However, it’s not been a total disaster.  Factor in the fact that I had a few days off this month (it was my birthday after all!) and I completely rewrote chapter 2 (losing several thousand words), and I came up with a new direction for one of the characters to take… suddenly it actually seems like solid progress, because the majority of those words were written in this past week.

It’s actually given me a bit of confidence to see the tale begin to take shape, and I’m looking forward to ploughing on.  I want to know how it ends!

I’ve decided I’ll keep doing a bi-weekly word count update.

In the meantime; watch this space!  I have a couple of festive announcements coming up!

It’s National Novel Writing month.

There’s an official site for it and everything.  The idea is that between the dates of the 1^st and 30^th of November, you write a 50,000 word (or more) novel.

I considered signing up, but one of the rules is that you can’t have started your Novel before November.  I did start typing before then, so I’d either have to start again (which seems a little silly) or write another novel at the same time as this one.  That would be possible; but I also have a little Christmas project on the go, (coming to you in December!) and I don’t want to start getting spread too thinly.

So I’m setting myself my own challenge; to finish the first draft of my novel by the end of November.

Will I make it?  Only time will tell.  But I’m going to try to be honest about my progress, so here’s my first update:  currently I’m sitting at 15,518 words.  Not that far in; but I do have a note book full of story notes, characters, places and plots, which took a good while to put together.

So it’s a race, and winter is coming…