Reading and Writing (Very Slowly): NaNoWriMo 2016 Update

Happy Birthday to my lovely life partner!

And Happy Wednesday (to everyone else)!

November has been so much fun for me this year, I have been celebrating life milestones.

These celebrations, which I love so much, also meant that I have not been writing every day. And as such, my novel writing month has been stalled for a few days. The last time I did a full session of writing was last week Thursday, November 10. This post is a quick update on my writing progress.

In a short sentence, my writing and novel progress has been very, very  slow.

To date, I have 10,432 words  when I really should have at least 26,000 words. By this time, I should be more than halfway through the 50K words needed to win NaNoWriMo.

So here is the absolute truth, I know I will not win NaNoWriMo 2016. But, I also know that I will continue to write and work on The Sixth Culling. According to the NaNo stats and progress tracker, at my rate of writing, I won’t be finished until January 16, 2017. Yes, that long.

And that is perfectly fine to me. In fact, I am certain that this writing project may take way longer.  I will also pause my writing to celebrate Christmas. By my estimation, my writing may take me well into February 2017.

So why I am moving this slow when the point to push ahead and keep going, keep writing?

Well… this is new to me. It is overwhelming. I am used to writing flash fiction and short stories.  And I have never really embarked fully on writing a novel. I have partly written book manuscripts and unfinished stories but this detailed planning and plotting is all still very new.

Last week, I paused writing after I completed part one of my story. Then I reconsidered my characters and their motivations. I found that my planning was far too little, I was underwriting.  This assessment was prompted after I completed reading Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I loved that book. I enjoyed the magic, the new take on vampires and the world building, as well as, the structure of the story.

And, this then informed me about what was lacking in my own writing.  I need more for long form fiction.  The story and interactions that I plotted in my overview were just not enough. So last week, I went back to planning, plotting and character development, I even added new characters. So going forward, this weekend, I will do more planning and refining of part one and I will continue writing. I have decided that due to my life choices, work schedule and this blog which I am committed to developing, I cannot churn out 1,667 words each day. It was so hard to do so for those two weeks.  I am committed to writing each week, and developing my story.

I will continue to give updates as I move along. I will also share some previews of what I have already written in the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading and connecting. Talk again on Friday, yes I am continuing with Happy Fridays. I like doing those shorter, lighter posts and also I hope to develop a new Friday flash fiction series.

Therefore, going forward I will be posting three days per week. There will be the original Sunday afternoon reflections and commentary about life in Jamaica,  our Wednesday book talks and then light recaps, first tries and favs on a Friday morning.

Take care. Have a great Wednesday!