All is Write with the World

Yes, it's a pun. And a bit of a bad one. But it means good things. I swear.

As I sit and write my first entry for December, I'm also busily hacking away at the fifteenth chapter of The Boar War. I'm somewhere in the eastern ocean, fighting a kraken, and I just spent an hour and a half learning about hemocyanin.

But, I'm writing.

And that's a good thing, right? Write. (God, the puns just never stop, do they?)

I promised myself I wouldn't get into this NaNoWriMo thing again. Then, as November pushed forward, I was bitten with the writing bug and decided that I would enter the contest. I was late, but hell, I had a good story and if I used the 50,000 word mark to help extend my story now, how was I not a winner?

Accordingly, I jumped in with both feet and I cranked on some chapters. I started and finished chapters 18 and 19. I also went back and looked at chapter 15 and decided that what I had written was shit and that I could come up with something better. Well, something better involved giant sea monsters and ships and hemocyanin. While I was at it, I started chapter 20. However, the big thing that has happened is that I've been writing human-based chapters, which is something I have had issues with in the past (on this project, at least). I took what I had written for 15 and saved it, moving it from the beginning of the chapter (which would have been a very short chapter, or a very boring chapter, or a very short, very boring chapter) and moved it to the middle, as a bridge between fight and character development. Right now I'm at 13 pages on that chapter and climbing. I've gone back and touched on 10 and 7, as well (my other two big human-only chapters) and done some expanding on my chapters with Redear (I'm still not sure about his name) and Jane and their travels north.

So, I got almost 14,000 words written in about three or four days. Thanksgiving hit, and the serotonin (10-hydroxytryptophan)-induced comas also followed. I took those four days and didn't do shit, and I suffered. Had I pushed on, I would have easily hit the 50,000 word mark. Oh well. I crapped the bed, but one thing is I didn't sacrifice quality just for the chace to win some stupid internet-based contest. So there. I did win, in a way.

More importantly, I think I've begun formulating a nice ending for the book. I've known HOW it was going to end, all along. I just couldn't come up with a formula for the denouement chapter. I'll only have one. Not to try and insult il Maestro, J.R.R. Tolkien, but I don't want a long, drawn-out conclusion (or several of them, for that matter). I'm just afraid that, with all the things I want to put into the conclusion, it's going to HAVE to be a bit drawn out. Perhaps I will have to make it two. Damn, I don't have a conclusion after all.

So, the numbers:

Word count: 76,681
Page count: 255

Remember, I'm shooting for 130 - 150,000 words, 450-500 manuscript pages. Guess who officially just passed halfway in BOTH categories.

All is, in deed, right with the world.