Writing Progress

[hrj]

I think I'm just going to keep my IWriSloMo posts here since nobody else seems to be using the community group.

I added a grand total field to the spreadsheet where I'm keeping track of viewpoint alternations and basic plot structure. This isn't the detailed plot sketch -- it's primarily intended to keep track of which POV I'm using for which events and to make sure that I'm alternating fairly evenly between my protagonists. So I have separate columns for the word-count for each protag and sub-totals for each of them for each of the 5 main sections of the story. (The 5 sections are conceptual breaks and not intended to be equal in length or importance. I'd guess that sections 3-5 are going to be roughly one third of the overall total all together.) Having added the overall totals, I was startled to discover that the story is up to 80,000 words. Based on the current projections of which plot milestones get filtered through which POV and based on my current gross average of 2000 words per POV section (it's very uneven with a minimum of 400 and a max of nearly 7000 at the moment) it looks like I'm about 3/4 done. This doesn't necessarily scale to the final word-count because there are a number of placeholders for bits that need expansion, and when I seriously set to work to improve my descriptive writing it both shrinks and grows. (Removing unnecessary "stage business" and adding more sensory description.)

Content-wise, I've just shoved my protagonists through their operatic romantic-tension-mill. I need to back up one POV unit and deal with Margerit's assignment to start developing the structure for a new Protective Mystery for her mystery guild to experiment with. After a few days of having to really work to get the story flowing, it's all back now. Mostly I'm getting my writing in on BART during the commute. This works very nicely in the morning when I'm guaranteed a seat, but coming home I'm often standing as far as Orinda or Lafayette, which cuts into the writing time. (I've tried writing standing up and it doesn't work very well.)

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I've written every day. That's the important thing. As an estimate, I'd say I've done 7000 new words in November, so if I keep up the same rate and am correct at having about 30,000 more to go, that's ... 30,000 / (7000 / 11) = about 47 days. But that's not counting the fact that I have about 4200 words for future snippets already written, so if that's subtracted out, then I'm down to approximately 38 days of writing to go. That says to me that I have a reasonable hope of getting a completed first-pass first-draft done before the end of the year if I keep at it. (Yeah, yeah, I know this is pathetic, but I do have a rather demanding day-job as well.) Now, this won't be a complete first draft because there are still a lot of notes, flags, and place-holders that need to be cleaned up. But still.

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

W00t! Glad to hear progress is happening :-)