NaNoWriMo 2013: Week Two

As I write these words week two of NaNoWriMo is ending, well for me. It officially ends Sunday at midnight but I'm a weird one when it comes to counting things. The explanation (and other fun stuff) for that is in the Week One post.

Keeping up with my tradition of updating weekly during NaNo, here we go:

Word Count: 133,317
Goal: 250,000
Words Needed: 116,683 (I'm over half-done. YAY!)
Novels: Novel 1: Seeker (complete as of Nov. 8): Sequel to Seer. Novel 2: Face Snatcher which is the first book in a 13 book crime fiction series. Yeah, 13, cuz again: I have a weird thing for numbers.
Plot so far: As stated in the Week One Post: you'll have to wait and check out the rest of the novel series coming in December.

Thoughts of the week: I was ecstatic when I finished Seeker. Seriously, I put to rest characters that have been in my head just about my entire writing career and have been with me through three restarts. It was a bitter-sweet ending: good that it was over but I'll miss Dawn, Ice and the crew.

Then I started Face Snatcher and wrote about 21,000 words on it on Nov 9. I also realized how freaking detailed crime fiction is. After the first Saturday on it, I took the Sunday off (for me) and wrote 7K. I also made a folder within my "Detective Series" folder for Face Snatcher and all subsequent novels. That's right: each novel in the series has its own folder.

Why? Well. I have a list of: victims, witnesses, the story itself, and other important points in that folder. I can guarantee that each story will need it's own victim and witness list so I can do these things right. Adding to that in the main folder I've got the plot for all 13 novels as well as another list of all the police and other detectives I've mentioned.

This week was Hell. Again. I got so discouraged when I realized how freaking much there was to remember when writing crime fiction until Mia, my FMC in the series gave an idea: make a list. So now for each chapter I'm starting it with a list of things for my characters to do and checking things off on the way. It helped that I had plotted the MC's being new to big cases so they're over-whelmed and needed a list of things to check on. We're going to get better together. Ha.

My hands still hurt. My wrists are in pain. I've slowed down my pace so I can produce a draft that's better than a first draft (which is what I normally aim for anyway), so I need more time to write while producing a few hundred less words. That doesn't mean I'm not writing huge amounts. If I'm not researching something mundane (IE: getting distracted and needed to check on something when I don't have to) I can still get 2,000 words an hour. My lowest word count was 1,400 in an hour. Highest was over 3,000. Anyway, let's move on.
The good news is that I'm about a day ahead of where I should be. The better news is that I don't think I'm too busy this weekend so I'm going to finish Face Snatcher by Sunday at 10PM. Why Sunday at 10PM? Well by then I can watch The Walking Dead and that's one thing I'm allowing myself as a reward for writing during the week.

I should mention that I did get 125,000 words on Day 13 as I had planned WITHOUT the 40K weekend of last weekend. It was a good feeling. My goal for this week it to either hit 200K or be really close. I'm also looking for a 50K weekend but I'm not sure how well that'd go. I've got stuff to do tomorrow morning which kind of has to be done. As it stands, I'll have one day to pack before going on vacation and into a social media silence. Totally not used to packing the day before so depending how this week goes, I might take a day to pack next weekend. Or get it started.

So overall: I'm feeling pretty good. I'm ahead and will only get further ahead tonight when I add anywhere from 5-7K words. I'm aiming for 200K (or close) by this time next week which will give me an nice, easy 50K in a week with writing time on a weekend. Which means I can be finished with my 250K goal by the 24th at 10PM. It's a hope.

Until next time: I found this about the quality and quantity debate. You should read it. Comments, questions, rants, rage and everything in between can be directed to the comments.