writing.today.com

I have never written so much in one day, ever.

This morning, my husband started singing, “Gotta write like the wind”–his own version of “Gotta ride like the wind”–and he isn’t signed up for NaNo. That was for my benefit.

One line in my story was: “Keep going! she told herself.” So I did. Here was today’s breakdown. I want a record of it somewhere to prove I wrote this much.

9:30am: 40,460
10am: 40,794 (334 words)
11am: 41,516 (722 words)
Noon: 42,381 (865 words)
1pm: 43,264 (883 words)
2pm: 44,278 (1,014 words)
3pm: 45,066 (788 words)
4pm: 46,028 (962 words)
5pm: 47,040 (1,012 words)
6pm: Same.
7pm: 48,196 (1,156 words)
8pm: 49,997 (1,801 words)

I typed the last word of my novella/short novel and found I had 49,997 words.

I showed my husband. He reached out and typed, “The very end.” That brought me to 50,000.

I did it!

The word count verifier at NaNoWriMo told me I had a different word count than Microsoft Word 2007 said I had. I added about 100 words and worked it out in the end.

Final count: 50,028 words… and the first draft of my novel is finished.

Holy crap monkies. Four days to go. 10,000 words left to write. Gulp.

I’m starting the climactic scene of the story. The villain is in the building. The world is ending (sort of). The sky is falling (about to). I know roughly what needs to happen, but I have no idea how I’m going to pull the scene off without it being as exciting as dishwater.

4,800 people have already “won” National Novel Writing Month. I am not yet one of them.

And Chris Baty caught up. He is now now at 40,000 words, like I am.

My writing friends, whom I all love dearly, all bailed on me this year. Not a single one of them decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo. No one in any of the writing groups I go to has signed up this year, except for me.

What do they know that I don’t? Perhaps sanity.

Four days. 10,000 words. Deadline: midnight Sunday, the last minutes of the month. Insanity, thy name is Rose Archer, novelist.

After a few moments, he pushed the door open and stepped out.

Ava straightened to her full height and strained her neck to try and see out through the narrow gap Caleb had left. Her eyes were at carpet level of the floor above. She leaned forward on the staircase, straining to hear where Caleb was.

Footsteps approached the door and Ava scrambled back down the stairs.

“Ava,” Caleb whispered above her.

Ava stopped and saw his silhouette

Ava stopped and turned back, a part of her cowering

Ava stopped and turned back. She climbed the stairs, again, but more reluctantly this time. The sudden sound of the footsteps closing in on her, and plus the darkness of his silhouette above her made her realize just how vulnerable she was to attack.

She waited to hear Caleb tell her that the nosferatu were coming, for her to swipe her tag on the scanner, to get back into the server room as quickly as she could, to run.

“C’mon,” he urged. “Hurry. It’s clear.”

Her heart still pounded as if he’d said warned her of an impending attack. She forced her feet forward until she was at the top of the staircase stairs.

Caleb said, “I’ll keep watch. You only have a minute. You only have a minute.”

She was too afraid to reply. She couldn’t bring herself to make any noise. She had seen what felt safe enough in the server room to be cocky over the radio when she’d had to, but outside of the dubious safety of those walls, the memory of what those things could do to a person was clear in her mind.

There was a sound on the street….

Chris Baty was kind enough to send out his weekly pep talk. I’m always glad to have any kind of encouragement, but I have a couple of comments about this particular letter.

1. Chris wrote, “Between my apartment and the Office of Letters and Light, there is a monster of a hill. I bike to work, and I always take a long route that steers me safely around the behemoth. I do this because I have the calf muscles of a goldfish, and because I’ve developed an aversion to feeling like I’m going to die first thing in the morning.” He tackled this hill and, “A day later, I’m still buzzing, and feeling more alive than I have in months.”

The goldfish line is classic. However, I have a very large, very steep hill just outside of town which I have purposefully climbed. The next day, I’m in excruciating pain. “Buzzing” the next day over a massive hill climb makes me think that Chris might be one of those brave/daring/insane souls who find swimming in freezing water in the dead of winter “exhilarating”, a five mile run “refreshing”, and writing 50,000 words in a single month “fun and–oh, wait. I signed up for that one.

2. He wrote, “In just one week, the sun will be setting on this year’s NaNoWriMo. As the light of the contest starts to dim in the final days, we will likely still be out on that hill, still struggling towards 50K.”

Oh thanks, Chris. Like we need the pressure. The clock is ticking down, the end is nigh! No stress there.

3. He wrote, “The world needs your book.”

Um, A+ as pep talk rhetoric. F- as touching on reality in any way, shape, or form.

4. Chris wrote, “The threshold for winning is 50K, but the climb towards it changes markedly at 35,000 words. This is the point when you’ve written enough of your novel that the course tilts downhill again, and you begin sailing towards the finish line.”

Wait, let me check…. No. No sailing going on here. Slogging, sighing, painfully dying. No sailing.

5. Chris wrote, “When you finish reading this email, write 250 words. When you have a spare moment at work or school, write 250 words. Every page you write gets you one step closer to a literary achievement that will be a source of pride for years to come.”

Yes, on the first part. On the second part, I think that should read, “A source of editing for years to come.”

And, finally:

6. Even Chris is at 30,019 words. I feel so much better.