NaNoWriMo 2021 - Day 5
We’re off! I hope everyone taking part is still writing and not given up. If not, congratulations.
I mentioned I was setting a goal of 75K in 20 days this year. I’m glad to say I’m on target to hit my goal. In fact, I’m on track to hit 80K. This is surprising to me. I’m normally a fairly slow writer and in previous years, even hitting the 1.7K words per day for NaNoWriMo was sometimes difficult. So what’s my secret?
There is no secret. I get up in the morning, catch up on things, then sit down and start sprinting. I’m writing this novel in sprints of 20 minutes. After each sprint, I take a break of anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes and catch up. Repeat. That’s it. This process seems to keep me engaged without burning me out. Doing this, I’ve managed over 4K words per day. I could do 5K with little trouble if I wanted, but I want to leave some time in the evening for myself.
So how is the story? My time travel story has a new tentative title, “Out of Time”. All I had going in was the first line, and a general feel for the main characters, so the first day and a half was slow. I had to establish my characters, their world, and some of the technology. Once that framework was laid, things took off. I’m near the end of Act I, and most of my characters have come alive and introduced a few twists I didn’t see coming. They also helped fill in some of the technology I was struggling to use and explain. There is conflict and complication.
One thing I’m still dealing with is since this is a time-travel story, how much of a history lesson do readers need? My gut tells me to not be overly concerned with that or even being historically accurate. This isn’t historical fiction, after all. However, I’m using historical events, and sprinkling enough facts to bring things to life and to act as Easter eggs for those that are students of the time.
I also wondered last time whether I should send my characters to interact with the characters of my last novel, “Last Call”. I’ve decided against that, even though a quick scene would have been cool. But it wouldn’t be anything other than a throwaway scene and take too much time (no pun intended) to set up properly.
Today, I plan on going over 20K words. I’m currently over 16K. It’s time to get back to writing.
Word up!