NaNoWriMo: On Track to Meet the Word Count

This month is like the bunny hop, pour coffee, write a few hundred words, complete chores, write some more, run some errands, finish the writing goal, and rest until the next day.

For NaNoWriMo my goal is to write and integrate editing techniques.

Such as these 5 Worthy Tips for Effective Editing. For my recent novel I poured words into my document without any real consistency. Once finished I moved on to edit. Luckily, I took the time to read books and articles before beginning. The only thing that saved me was that I thought to incorporate these two preparations: Fiction Writing: Prepare Before You Start and Fiction Writing: Top Character Creation.

After I edited my novel a third of the way through, I decided to change from present tense to past tense. The reason came from many examples, which showed how past tense moved the sentence along faster than present tense. Even though it’s a young adult/new adult novel I decided I liked the past tense style better.

This set me way back in my editing. I started the edit over and re-wrote just about every sentence. My biggest disappointment was that I waited until I finished to research editing for fiction.

I hope I learned my lesson. So far the prequel I’m writing incorporates what I’ve learned. It takes me a little longer to write. I think of a sentence, and then rewrite it in my head before I type it out. However, I expect this will save me a lot of time and effort when I start my edits.

I’m excited that I’ve kept pace with the suggested 1,667 words a day. Day five and I have 8,579 words written. Several of those days have been hard. I only wrote a little all day and barely finished before I went to bed. However, I think of this Winning Strategy to Beat Editing Blues and now I’m getting into a groove of finishing before noon.

The choice to write the prequel has helped a lot. I’m filling in scenes mentioned in my novel. It’s working out beautifully. I have subplots and fun characters. The twitter account @NaNoWordSprints has also been a huge support in this endeavor. Their prompts and time frames give me that pressure I need to speed up my writing.

I expect to keep up my productivity until month’s end.

Have you found any techniques that help you write? Let me know about your thoughts! I’d love to hear any NaNoWriMo stories, or any writing challenges you have experienced.Thanks for visiting A.G. Zalen’s blog.