November’s almost here again, and you know what that means. Yep, it’s time for another writing push. For me, though, this year is going to be a bit different. As you know, the goal is supposed to be a novel of 50,000 words or more in a month. Well, most of mine are a lot longer than that. (My shortest full novel, Before I Wake, was about 83,000 words long.) On the other hand, writing 50,000 words in November would make it my least productive month so far this year.
So here’s what I’m going to do. The 50,000 word mark is still on the table, but it’s definitely not the only objective. Rather, it’s the first order of business, and my goal with it is to reach it as quickly as possible, while still maintaining the level of quality I expect from myself.
The story I’m doing is called The Soulstone Sorcerer, and it’s my first attempt at more “traditional” sword-and-sorcery fiction. It’ll still have weirdness, humor, and a generally lighthearted feel to it, but it’s going to look a lot more…ordinary? I’m not sure of the best word to describe it. Maybe that can wait until I’ve actually written the thing.
Anyway, it’s looking in my head like it’ll be about 140-150K words, so at least as long as Nocturne. That’s not getting done in a month, even if I do nothing else with my life in that time. So completing the novel simply isn’t one of my goals. Instead, after I hit the 50K mark, the rest of the month will be the endurance round: max words written. Quality remains paramount, however. I’ll save the stream-of-consciousness verbiage for posts like these.
I will continue my tradition of daily (or close enough) posts. These won’t be too detailed, but more like status updates. As usual, those will replace the usual content for the month, and regular posts will resume on December 4, my next scheduled posting date.
This, I hope, will be my 6th consecutive “win”. Here’s the rest of the streak, for reference:
- 2012: Heirs of Divinity
- 2013: Out of the Past
- 2014: Before I Wake
- 2015: The City and the Hill
- 2016: Nocturne
(Technically, Out of the Past wasn’t 50,000 words as a completed story, but I did consider it complete, thus fulfilling the second of the two criteria for the month. I’ll count it as a win for that reason.)
Wish me luck!