December Writing Update

Over a decade ago I discovered NaNoWriMo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is a challenge to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month, enough for a novel. The first year I tried it with a personal goal of just hitting 20K. With my success at that number, the following year I went for the full 50K and have "won" eleven times now. My 2013 NaNo project eventually became Through Hammers and Verse: Revealing Love.

This year I took a different approach to NaNoWriMo. Instead of writing a brand new idea, I used the time to make significant progress on my romance trilogy of novellas tentatively titled Suitcases & Love. I had finished the first draft with one round of revision of book one before September but with school kicking into gear, the second book about Aubrye and Greg had languished.

NaNo proved to be the jumpstart I needed. Although the first few days I fell behind the optimal word count (1667 words per day), I caught up after the first weekend. Eventually I had my best day of writing ever the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but more importantly, I finished the first draft of the second novella and got the third novella very close to its end.

 

This past week I wrapped up the first draft of Lucy and Marcus's story. Next up is to do a read-through of all three novellas in a row and create a database to keep track of important character details as well as make note of any major plotholes (there may be a few lines where I typed "and then they did some stuff" that I should probably clean up as well). I am aiming to be at least halfway through this process by the end of December although I would love to push myself and be completely done with this step before the new year.

Keep an eye on the Facebook page as I work through this process. There will definitely be a request for advance readers but I am also anticipating a few polls about a few details.