Miracle I got anything down today.  In fact, I started writing at 3am.  Yes folks, 3am.  COMMITMENT.

I had a long (very stressful) business meeting today and when I came home (after a short nap in a failed attempt to escape the stress followed by a not un-stressful business phone call) I had to write Monday’s She Has No Head! column…so that took up my allotted “writing time” for today.  Nonetheless, I had a scene in mind and thought I could get it down, so at 3am I dragged my laptop out and here we are.

I’m exhausted.  Time for bed and the hope for a bit more time to devote to writing tomorrow.

Today’s word count: 1,077

MS total word count: 45,132

I also hit 150 pages, so that’s nice.

Inspirational image for a scene I wrote today:

This is a great representation of my main character Tessa's victorian house.

This day should have been a bigger word count, but I just had so much catch up to play after a busy week, not to mention getting home exceptionally late on Friday and having to do some work as prep for a meeting Sunday.  Writing kept sliding down the list.  Still, I did manage to sit down for a couple hours and get some pages down.  Tomorrow I might lose completely as I not only have to go to a meeting for at least six hours, but I also have to write/finish writing She Has No Head! – so we’ll see.

Today’s word count: 1,694

MS Total word count:  44,055

Inspirational image for a scene I was writing today:

Worked a very very long damn day.  Wasn’t even going to try writing tonight, but had a bunch of ideas and scenes brewing despite the exhaustion and so I gutted it out.  So glad I did.  Got a lot of great stuff and a semi-decent word count.

Today’s word count: 2,037

MS new word count:42,361

Inspirational image for a scene I was writing today:

it's a long story.

Nice. Despite a hell of a lot going on today I still managed to bang out 2,027 .  This takes the MS total to 38,548.

Tomorrow will be tough though.  Long day at work, plus at least two CBR Reviews to write. Got to stay on path however as it looks like I’m going to be working Sunday.  That, plus a column due for She Has No Head! is going to make things VERY tight this weekend.

Inspirational image for a scene I was writing tonight:

Mmmm...weapons!

Solid start.  Wrote 2,021 words tonight, which brings me to 36,521 total for the MS thus far.

But even though today was a commute to the office day which usually means less time available, the front of my week is always easier than the back end, so anything less than 2k today would have been a disappointment.  Didn’t love anything I wrote, but I got from point A to point B and it all works.  I’ll make it prettier later…or eventually cut it, time will tell.  Mostly I’m pleased because I wanted to stop at about 600 words, but forced myself to keep going and cruised past my 2k/day goal…okay only by 21 words, but still.

Inspirational image for something I was writing about today:

A 1971 Jaguar E Type - my character's is silver, but this is damn close. So pretty!

So last year was my first official (though actually non-official) attempt at NaNoWriMo.

In a way I failed massively (didn’t come close to making my word count goals) but in another way it was a massive success.  As I put down 20k+ in a reasonable amount of time and advanced my worldbuilding for that particular book (Pariahs) dramatically. I still only have about 30k on that book a year later, but with reasonably good reason, and the worldbuilding is solid (though still missing pieces) and my outline is nice and tight.  More importantly I am still excited about the book, which is kind of huge.

All that said, I have two projects vying for my attention this year (Pariahs and a new project), and I’ve decided that I have better momentum and enthusiasm on the other newer project, so I’m going to focus on it for NaNo this year in the hopes that I can get to the finish line.  As of tonight I have 34.5k already on that book.  So 50k will likely take me through to the finish line, or at least very close.  I’m actually pushing very hard and trying to get there BEFORE November ends, but this should be a reasonable way to track how that goes regardless.

So, like last year, I’ll be unofficially tracking my progress (primarily via word count) here on 1979 Semi-Finalist.  I continue to be paranoid about titles (when I have a great one) so let’s just call this project SK.  And here’s an inkling of what it’s about. 

For those of you out there also doing NaNo – best of luck!  Now…GO!

SK = Tessa Battle and her axe 'The Black Dove'...

Final NaNo word count:  21,372 words / 71 pages

So…really…a total failure when you consider 50K as the goal…which it was.  But in order to make myself feel better – in addition to admitting that doing NaNo helped me figure out much of my character and world building work for Pariahs and that I wrote more novel-related words this month than I have in the last six combined – I also did a lot of other cool stuff this month…let’s review!

I wrote this monster of an article for my She Has No Head! 1 year anniversary.  I also wrote four other articles – on the DV8 Mini-Series, Batwoman #0, Sarah Glidden’s How To Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less, and a 10 Great Women of The Walking Dead...but that 20 Favorite Fictional Comics Females was definitely the big one.

I wrote a review of The Walking Dead’s premiere episode for The Best Show’s You’re Not Watching.

And in addition to doing some nice fun weekly podcasting with Nick and Ross (and Justique!) over at AudioShocker, I went insane and decided to start my own podcast 3 Chicks Review Comics (more work than anyone will admit to you – don’t let them fool you!) with fellow comics lovers and lady bloggers Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass and Maddy from When Fangirls Attack.

Of course there was also the regular blogging here on 1979, which included Cover Solicits In Three Sentences Or Less, Panel of the Week, Cover of The Week, and a slew of other topics that either interested or enraged me.

I also got Ladies Comics Project, Phase II kicked into gear.  We’ve jumped from 19 ladies participating in Phase I, to a pretty huge 30+ for Phase II…this will mean more work for me (yay?) but also hopefully an even better project!  You can look for those columns showing up in February of 2011 on my She Has No Head! column on Comics Should Be Good…but in the meantime, read Ladies Comics Project Phase I, Part One, here!

So, yeah, all that plus working full time and trying to have a life (I totally failed at the latter this month)…makes me feel pretty damn good about that 21k.  So thanks for indulging me.  I plan to keep pushing on Pariahs, and will update as I can on progress.  Ideally I’d like to have a working first draft by January 1st.  Maybe by writing it here I can help motivate myself to commit to that.  Regardless, thanks for reading everyone and for all the great support.  Also…if you’re not following me on twitter yet…what’s up with that?!  Do it! 

15, 060 words / 48 pages

Woo.  Still way behind with only three days to go, but it’s hard to feel bad.  I like what I’ve got, and I’ve written more this month than I have in an age, and this experiment has pushed me so hard to solve problems with the plot and world building.  Had I not done this I suspect I wouldn’t have worked on this book at all…instead I have a nice chunk (and hopefully maybe 10 to 15k more to come) and a lot of the world building and characters and plotting ironed out – which in pseudo science-fiction/post apocalyptic books like mine – is a lot of the battle.  So though I’m disappointed there’s not more by now, it’s still a hell of a start to the new novel…I think depending on where I end up I’ll try to keep this same attitude and finish a draft by January 1st, even though December is going to be part hell and part heaven from a busy/commitments standpoint.  We’ll see.  I’ll keep updating, at least through November 30th.  Tomorrow at least should be one more good day of words…maybe I can get to 25K.

Hmmm.  What happened to days 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18?

Mostly, THIS happened, which was awesome to do and ultimately very successful, but hugely time consuming.  Also I had to read a whole book for a writing group crit – a very good book, but when you’re trying to jam out 50k, 340 pages of reading definitely slows you down no matter how good it is.

But there’s two piece of good news here.

#1. I found myself thinking about my book constantly. Thinking about it and anxious to get back to it, and in some cases a couple days of break – not as many as I took, but a couple – was good to get my wheels turning about where some plot points should ultimately go and more creative ways to do both new scenes and scenes I’ve already written…so that’s all really encouraging.

#2: 10,105 words / 34 pages

KA-POW!

Okay, fine, not “Ka-pow!”, but I’m freaking delighted to be over 10k, and unlike how I felt last week – which was something along the lines of “um…what do I write next?” – I’ve got scene after scene in the queue right now.

Headed into the Thanksgiving next week/weekend, since it will be a quiet one with no travel and just Adam and I and two extra days off from “real work”, it will hopefully give me extra time to get to where I need to be (i.e. finished)…wish me luck…nearly 40k in ten days is no bullshit.