The National Novel Writing Month Challenge: 20K words and counting

The month is past its halfway mark. The NaNoWriMo schedule should have the novel at 25,000 words by now. I have 20,500+ words on my novel.

I am happy with my progress, and just to make sure that I do finish on time, I have increased my daily word count quota to 3000 words. The stats say I need to do 2,200+ words a day to finish. That should give me some allowance.

I used a method which would allow me to write at my own pace, and supposedly would not hinder me with what thinking about what happens next. I started to write the novel without thinking about the story. I wrote parts of it, a little at the end, and then a snipped at the middle. Until I got a hang of the story, and found an arc I can follow. The non-linear way I used also allowed me to insert other material instead of editing the existing text. Additionally, I can put in more words in between what I had already written.

I post the daily word count on FB, in order to keep me motivated. I am heartened by the show of support I am getting.

For a while there, I thought I ran out of ideas on what to write. I wasn't writing yet, but early last night, I thought that there was nothing to write, and that the arc itself would not be able to supply me with more ideas. After I had started the next chapter, I got the feeling that there would be more fillers, or that the scenes would write themselves to fit the cavities, as it were.

I'm doing good. I started one week late, and now on track to finish about 5 days before the deadline.

I'll start public posting of some materials soon. I hope to have some innocuous and vague chapters written which I can post without giving away the story.

An offshoot of this challenge is that I now have a good feel of writing 3,000 words a day of narrative.