Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Conquering NaNoWriMo a Word at a Time

I just hit the 50k mark on my NaNoWriMo novel, The Memitim. No, I'm not kidding: 5,000 words in 10 days. My hands hurt, I'm exhausted, and I will probably take tomorrow, maybe even Thursday, off.

But I'm not done. The projected length is estimated between 75,000 and 80,000 words. And I plan to write all that this month. Last year, I wrote 65,000 words in 21 days, so I know it can be done.

Writing novels that long is in itself a milestone for me. Only a couple of years ago, I would've balked at writing something that length. Let's just say I had to retrain my brain.

How did I do it? Plotting. Not only did I use Dramatic Pro to help develop the story, I used a program called WriteWay Pro. It's like Scrivener, in that you can break your story down into scenes and write in a non-linear fashion, then import the document into Word. I used WWP with my novel, The Judas Dilemma, currently sitting on a publisher's desk. (Fingers are crossed.)

What I like about WriteWay Pro is I can make notes about character, setting, dialogue, conflict, even notes on revisions for that particular scene. I think using it has helped me write faster. Not saying my first draft doesn't suck. I mean, we have to be realistic here. *grin*

But really, writing a book, whether during NaNoWriMo, or any other time of the year, is simply putting one word after the other.

Happy Writing!

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