Writing a New Novel

[David DeLee]

I've always been a big fan of NaNoWriMo and admired those who took to the challenge. I never did because November never seemed like a good time to embark on something like--the holidays and shopping and family trips and all that. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)

Anyway, I'm starting work on a new novel and since tomorrow is Aug 1st I thought let's see if I can give this a go. I've got all my preliminary planning done--outlines, lists, character sketches, what have you --

So starting tomorrow I'm challenging myself to write 90k words over the next 30 day so that by Aug. 31st I will have a complete first draft done. That's an average of 3000 words per day. I will post my daily word count here at the end of the day for anyone who's interested in following and maybe I'll write a word or two about what I face as far as challenges go in trying to get this done.

Anyway, the title of the book is FATAL DECEPTION and it's the next novel in my Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter series.

For inspiration, here's a picture of the cover I've already created.

Anyway, wish me luck and please don't laugh too hard if (when) I fall on my face.

David DeLee

[David DeLee]

Day 13 & 14

So yesterday was spent working a lot and actually getting no where. I'm in the middle sat 33,200 words in and I've stalled. I mentioned how I struggles with going back over the my outline and notes, etc. this past weekend. Well on Tuesday as much as I tried and wrote, everything seemed to suck and slow the story down and just feel bad so after a lot of work I've re-written some scenes but made no forward movement on the word count.

Then today, day 14 life came knocking and I spent the entire day working on a family crisis. Nothing life-threatening, but having to do with getting papers done and redone and phone calls made and coordinated a bunch of s**t to get my youngest girl's college admissions squared away and finalized. Long story short no work done today.

Tomorrow I'll hit it twice as hard.

[David DeLee]

Day 15 - Halfway to goal

I had a decent writing day but shy of goal, only 2800 words. I do feel like I'm making progress again, though so that's a good thing. Total words this month 36,000.

[David DeLee]

Day 16

It's late. I wrote 4600 words today. If you've been following You can see I'm a little behind schedule. Should be at 48,000 words at this point but am only at 40,600.

That wouldn't be too terrible except I know I'm about to lose four days because of a trip next week to PA/NJ. A family thing. So with that in mind, I'm pushing to get 4500 words done per day until I leave. The pressure's mounting.

[Richard Krauss]

Haven't checked the site lately, but your daily updates are fun to peruse. NaNoWriMo also runs an event called Camp NaNoWriMo which was held in April and July this year. Very motivating, although the original November event gets more traction. 

You're doing great David! Keep the wordage coming. Are you staying with your outline? Added any new scenes that weren't on the roadmap?

[David DeLee]

Hey Richard,

Interesting about the NaNoWriMo events. I'll have to check them out. As I said, I always wondered about doing the challenge in November, just a crazy month to begin with. It's always been in my household anyway.

I am sticking to my outline but I've been struggling with the middle because it was the least planned out and now I'm paying the price for it in lost time as I try to figure out motivations for the criminal activities--why the criminals are doing what they were doing, along with the numerous subplots I've got going, and trying to weave them all logically both in how I present the info to the reader and keeping them in logical order within the framework of the story. That has been my greatest speed bump and they've all come along in the middle. Which for me isn't unusual, but frustrating. I anticipate I'll pick up the pace significantly during the final third as I have a much firmer grasp in my mind and in my outline as to what will be going on.

That said, I have added scenes. I originally mapped out around forty events, with some of those broken into to two scenes due to known POV shifts. So as usual I'll have around sixty or so scenes in the 90k novel. Again typical for my novels. Thanks for following and checking in.

[Richard Krauss]

Thanks for commenting David. I've done NaNo once and Camp once. Both were great experiences. (In the second event) whenever I started to bog down with details that I hadn't covered in my outline, I used ALL CAPS so it would be easy to find and clean up later during the rewrite. For example, if I needed to figure out what kind of car so-and-so drove, instead of researching it, I just wrote "so-and-so drove his GREEN CAR. . ." Did the same thing for minor characters who needed names. Used their role in place of their name while drafting. Small things, but they keep you from getting bogged down and keep the wordage counting.

Congrats on hitting 43,000! Best wishes in the day ahead.

[David DeLee]

Richard,

That's a great technique. Thanks for sharing and I can see myself incorporating it.

[David DeLee]

Day 17

Okay writing day but with less than stellar production because of some back and forth re-writes as I went along. At the end of the day only 2400 words done, bringing my 17 day total to 43,000.

[Jemir Johnson]

Really like the "Fatal Deception" and "A Matter of Justice" covers. Congratulations with both books and having the will to put both your novella and novel in motion. Continued creativity and success wished to you, David.

[David DeLee]

Jemir,

Thanks for the nice comments on the covers. I appreciate it. I'm really enjoying the learning curve with all the things that go into self-publishing but playing around with making covers and research what other have been doing is really a lot of fun for me.

[David DeLee]

It appears I've been a bit remiss in posting, my last entry being on the 17th.

So here's the details--

Day 18 - I wrote 3600 words

Day 19 - I wrote 1100 words

Day 20 - I wrote 3700 words

That brings my WIP total up to 51,400 so I'm still about three days behind schedule (I should have broken 60k today and didn't).

Normally with only ten days to go, I'd be confident I could still get to 90k by day 30 but as I think I mentioned, I've got an (unplanned when I started out) four day trip coming up and I don't see getting any writing getting done during it, unfortunately. But I'll keep pushing and get as far as I can which is the whole point of setting the goal anyway, and I'm much further along on this project at a faster rate than any I've ever done before.

[Richard Krauss]

Well done, David! Thanks for keeping track here.