Day 22 stats:
Min. Daily Average Word Count: 1,667
Word Count Goal: 1,700
Actual Word Count: 2,037
Daily Word Count Score (words in excess of min daily average): +370
Total Word Count Score: 34,241
Chapters complete: 15
Managed to at least hit minimum daily average while flying home (thank you Virgin America and Google for the free wifi at 35,000 feet!), but really feeling the pressure to catch up now. As much as I wanted to avoid it, I’m behind. I fear I’ll be doing a lot of last-minute writing during the Thanksgiving holiday, and I’ll be compressing the plot in order to finish a recognizable first draft in the time remaining.
No chance at all of even thinking about the Sora short story, much less the Kenji novella – but I should have plenty from the Mia novel to draw from when I do sit down to write those “prequel” works.
I have managed to just about get Mia, Sora, and Kenji out of Pine Peak and on their way (while more or less coming to some resolution about how the conflict in Pine Peak that will be the action climax in the Kenji novella plays out). It’s incredibly backwards to try and write the novel first, when Sora and Kenji’s stories chronologically come first – but I didn’t make the decision that NaNo falls in November, and that was when I finally had time to write. Meh. You do the best you can, right?
For some reason, I’m finding it easier to slam through much of the writing without doing a lot of filler (e.g., detailed descriptions of characters, making dialogue more verbose than it needs to be, etc.). Instead, my writing slows down when I try those exercises, even though it’s supposed to help lift the word count. I think I’ve got way too much plot-wise in my head, and if I spend any time on anything other than getting characters through the plot, I’ll never get if finished in time. I suppose that’s a good thing, as I can revisit sections of the novel in the second draft to explode the detail where necessary.