4497 words today. Pretty good day today. I’m 700 words shy of the 30,000-word mark.
Today was pretty smooth skies, no major issues with the story. I did not do as much looping as I could have, opting to enjoy the smooth ride while I could. I’ll have some looping sessions tomorrow. But so far nothing is in need of that much work other than the usual loopingtreatment, so I can afford to let things go for a day or so.
I can still see pretty far ahead in the story. My GPS is telling me things should be smooth for at least the next day or two, with things dimming down around New Year’s Day or so. That would put me around the 70-75% mark, which would probably be the story’s final rough spot. And even then, this rough spot shouldn’t be as bad because I have a faint picture of how this is going to end. That picture will become clearer each day until I get the urge to “race” to the end.
I still don’t know how long this story will be. It’ll probably land somewhere between 40K-50K.
EVERY NOVEL HAS STAGES
Novels are kind of like people. As they develop more words (or “age”), things start happening.
0-5,000: Young Manuscript. Needs your constant attention. Many novels fail here.
5,000-10,000: Adolescent manuscript. It’s still developing and you don’t know what it will become, but it’s still sweet and mostly plays nice with you.
10,000-20,000: Teenage manuscript. Things really start to go off the rails. This is when the “honeymoon” phase ends and, if things don’t come together, when people start abandoning their manuscripts en masse.
20,000-30,000: Adult manuscript. Around this range, the story itself is solidifying and mostly formed. It’s less problematic for you and you’ve got a handle on most of it. You may still deal with writer’s block somewhere in the 20s but it’s usually not as bad as during the teenage phase.
30,000-40,000: Middle age manuscript. Aside from a mid-life crisis somewhere in this range, it’s fine. It usually won’t give you trouble except for making plot lines and character threads merge. Sometimes that can be a challenge.
40,000-50,000: Senior citizen manuscript. The novel just wants to retire already. LOL. In my experience, this range FLIES by. Once I see the picture of the end, I turn on my turbo-thrusters and focus completely on getting the story done.
I’m being silly with the names, of course, and every manuscript length is different, but this is about the lifecycle that I experience every time. I’m always happy once I get to around the 66%-75% mark. It means the novel is a sure thing.
ANOTHER CRAFT/PRODUCTIVITY THING
Once I hit the 30,000-word mark, I like to do a semi-final pass of the story, looping through a couple chapters every day to fix any inconsistencies. I start at the beginning and work my way forward. I do this because a lot changes from word 1 to word 30,000 that you don’t realize. Also, this prevents me from having to do a full pass once I finish the story. By starting this work now, it will make my “final pass” much more manageable.
At my current pace, if I do at least 3,000 words per day, the novel will be done sometime around the middle of next week, sooner if I hit above the average. Unofficially, I’d like to be done by end of the weekend, honestly.
ANOTHER BENEFIT OF THIS CHALLENGE
I had to go to the doctor today for some routine stuff, and discovered delightfully that I’ve lost around 4 pounds since this challenge started (!!). That’s about 2 pounds per week. I’ve been watching what I’ve been eating and am down to about 2 meals a day, almost no meat, so that’s definitely helping.
Have a good night.
PROGRESS TRACKER
Words: 4,497 (960 in session 1, 1051 in session 2, 3536 by hand)
Calories: 100
Miles: 3
Time on bike: 60 minutes
TOTAL
Words: 29,373
Calories: 950
Miles: 28.5
Time on bike: 570 minutes (9.5 hours)
Pounds lost: 4
