Hell, yeah!



It's been a bit of a bumpy ride but I have got there. I've gone and done my second NaNoWriMo following the completion of one back in 2016. I'm pretty sure I wrote every day, or certainly almost everyday last time. This year I missed six days of writing. I haven't done the maths here but I reckon that that is almost a week.

Looking back at that if I could even have just written 500 words or so on each of those days it would have made the end a little less 'seat of the pants'. It does go to show "write little and often" is very much worth doing.

I've hit the fabled 50k mark this afternoon and whilst I've achieved that marker I have not by any stretch finished the story. I'm reckoning its about two-thirds finished. So I've a way to go. It's very much been an organic process with my fingers taking the story to places I had no idea it would end up, with stories of gangsters and leaving someone at the altar and all sorts of shenanigans- and I know there's much to come too. It's strange how much different it has been from the first one, but it's been a lark.



The main thing I found I had to introduce which I didn't have originally was some jeopardy. The original plans really had a travelogue with some people going from a to b with things happening. But there was not enough to drive it along to create an interesting narrative. As soon as I put in some danger and an interesting history with current implications to the story it held together a lot more and made the writing easier. An experience worth learning for me. No matter how much planning you have for every little detail some big picture stuff needs to be there to hold it together lest the whole thing fall apart.

Anyways, I am made up to get to goal and I now aim, by the end of January, to finish the first draft off (December is a bust with work).

If I've learnt one thing on this odyssey it is write a little every day. And if I've learnt two it is; chocolate hobnobs do not a breakfast make, but when needs must...