Good gods, look at me writing for two consecutive days?!
This is the Draft #3 of Darkling, if you're curious. Which is why there's 9k on the first day, it's what I've already rewritten and edited prior to October.
But I wanted it on there because I'd ideally like to reach the 40k Rewritten mark by the end of the month, leaving me 60k for November, give or take...
But I'm happy with 1.7k for tonight, it's been 3x20minute sprints, which is pretty good considering I feel like I haven't written in forever.
Which means after this, I only have "Victory" and the Epilogue!
I'm so fucking excited. I so BADLY want to share what's happening!!
All I can say is this chapter is already 2.6k, and I'm only halfway through, so it's going to be on the chonkier side. Which is good, I've had about 10 chapters in a row on the lower end of the spectrum for Darkling's average, but AHHH I'm so excited for *someone* to read this bleeding book now!!
Okay, well, nothing about this last week of November is going to plan, so I'm going to stop making plans lol.
November 25th was supposed to be a 0-word day while Mum and I did Christmas Errands, but honestly, it was so cold we didn't go anywhere, and mostly slept.
I did manage to get 1 hour of writing in before midnight, after I woke up around 10.30pm, so netted a nice little 1.9k words. Not my daily minimum I was aiming for, so no garlic bread yesterday, but still better than 0!
Since I was up at Midnight, I started the 26th with three 20-min sprints, and went to take a nap before mum woke up because...
Today was the day. Mum and I went out to do the Christmas Chores instead, we walked into the store, and the power went out. In the WHOLE town! A full 7 post codes, thousands of homes and businesses without power.
So we looked at each other and were like; "Home?" "Yes". lol
Mum and I are both a touch supersticious and like, literally as we cross the threshold the power goes out in the whole town? Nah, we don't mess with that lol.
Anyway, I took another nap, and then settled down this evening to do some more sprints. I got another three 20-min sprints, totally 2 hours writing today, and just shy of 5k words.
Since I still have to cook a meal I'm calling the 26th about 40 minutes before midnight for a change, but it does mark the completion of several of my goals.
I've written 97,844 words in November. My goal started at 60k, then increased to 84k, then increased again to 96k, so I've beaten every target I set for myself this November.
My manuscript word count is currently 118,502 words! But, more importantly, I've got about 7 scenes/chapters left to write. My chapters are averaging about 3,100 words so I'm looking at about 22,000 words of the manuscript left to write. Which feels INSANE to me!
So, if I can do about 5.5k every day for the rest of the month, I might, MIGHT, even finish Darkling before the end of November! Which is, at the moment, the only goal I semi-set and haven't met yet. To be perfectly honest, I only Semi-set the goal because I didn't think it was doable?
I knew, once I hit the new content, as opposed to the redrafting, my wordcount per sprint would drop, and it has. I've been getting somewhere around the 400-600 word range, depending on how sure I am I know what the characters are going to say, and how complex the discussion+foreshadowing is.
At that speed, I'll need about 11 sprinta a day for the next four days. I usually max at out between 6 and 9 sprints a day, so I still don't know if that's doable for me, especially with Christmas prep, and I don't wanna push too hard and burn out.
But, regardless, I'll continue writing Darkling (if it's not done) into December. Especially since I have a preorder piece for Darkling to finish off too, and then I'll finish writing work for the year on December 19th as always.
So my real deadline for this manuscript, and it's accompanying preorder-bonus-scene, is December 19th. And if I can't do 22,000 words in the next 23 days, I should be hung at dawn lol.
I'm still not questioning it. We're not going to look directly at my muse, in case we scare her off.
Because two of my 20minute sprints today got me, literally, over 1,000 words. EACH. Which is... mental.
It did mean I managed to get my cheese garlic bread for lunch though! Which was lovely...
Now, if this weird phenomenon of me writing over 3.5k a day continues, I could get as much as 85k written this month, but I'm NOT changing my goal from 60k.
There's two reasons for this, the first is I don't know if I can sustain 3.5k a day. I DO know I can sustain 2.5k though, because I've done it before.
The second reason is with a 60k target, 3.5k a day looks like incredible progress, which is a huge boost to me mentally. And it happened the first time I completed Nano; I got 50k about 10 days before the end of the month, and I was instantly like "Oh my god, I wonder how much more I can do before the deadline?!"
So I'm hoping to mimic that feeling. We'll see, I guess. There's a LOT of November left to go, and the Second Week Slump is a real thing.
Since I was doing particularly well today, the 3rd, and I know I'm going out with my Dad on Thursday, I decided to double up. I know my dad is very mentally draining for me (In the nicest possible way, he's an extrovert, and I'm not) so I did some math. 14k is 3.5k for 4 days, so I decided to aim for that on day 3 to get me an extra 3.5k worth of words "in hand" so to speak.
It took me an extra 3 sprints in the evening, but I managed it.
As for November 4th, I slept fine, but woke up feeling blech.
And somehow, doing absolutely nothing, I'd hurt my ankle so that constant throbbing was a bit draining.
Having said that, I'm not using up one of my grace days, I'm just not going to push myself TOO hard today either.
I managed one sprint before having to go and elevate my ankle for a few hours, but came back later this evening to finish up.
Sprint 1; 963
Sprint 2; 773
Sprint 3; 854
Spring 4; 874
And in the interest of not pushing myself, I'm going to leave it at 4 sprints today. Which finished Day 4 at;
It's not that I've not been working on it, but I've been severely blocked. To the point where I began a full manuscript rewrite to try and knock something loose.
What actually did it was a conversation with someone when I was on holiday. Spoilers, so I can't go into too much of the how and why, but it introduced a whole new location to the plot.
A location which I had to foreshadow.
With an entirely new Chapter 3, which will shift all the other chapters forward by one.
And tonight, I made my first actual, NEW words, kind of progress for an age.
996 NEW Darkling Words tonight, and I'm fucking delighted.
Assuming this new Chapter 3 is around the same length as my other chapters, I've got about 35k words to write, and 95k words to REwrite, and I'm aiming for the end of November to complete it.
Here we go again, let's pray nothing medical gets in the way because I do have a handful of hospital appointments up-and-coming to deal with my reoccurance of pulmonary embolisms.
November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night here in the UK. And I let myself sleep in, so I didn't get up until midday, and I had to do a load of washing up, in bits, while resting my foot. Because of course, our dishwasher broke down after I did roast bloody turkey.
So it's currently, as of typing this, 6pm and I've written nothing. It's a lazy day though, so mum and I are ordering takeaway for dinner, and hopefully that'll give me the rest of the evening to get some words in...
It did not. Because after dinner, the cat was ill twice. *facepalm* Furballs, so nothing serious but still, mum can't sort it, she's fine with dogs but not cats, so that's my job and...
Yeah. I FINALLY started writing at 10pm
On one hand, starting at 10pm does mean I had enough time left to get my four sprints in...
On the other hand, my speed stalled just a bit. IF you can call 3.2k stalling. It's still substantially more than the 2.5k I've set as my daily target, but it's also the lowest wordcount I've had all month so... mixed feels, comforted with my earned garlic bread.
Interestingly, as I was rewriting draft 2 into draft 3 I hit a point where I was about 2/3rds of the way through an Andric POV chapter, and suddenly thought, "Actually, this is a good stopping point..."
I had another 800-850 words of the chapter left to rewrite, but when I looked at it, putting that in the next chapter, which is Lizzy's POV, gave me a chance to show a bit more of Olwen's character, and to foreshadow Booker's mild precognitive ability, and to show some more relationship development with Andric and her.
Also, it brings up the next chapter's word count, which doesn't hurt. It was a little on the lower end of my bracket.
So all in all I'm not mad about the shift, it was just a surprising one, and not one I'd planned for.
Excerpt;
"You okay?" he whispered against her hair, and she shrugged.
"I hate that you're hurt," she confessed, and felt his breathing stutter.
"I know."
She didn't know what to say to that. She knew Andric had accepted, and she wasn't going to ask him not to. It left them right where they were standing, and then Booker's voice broke through their bubble.
"Everything okay now?" he asked, voice falsely bright, and Lizz lifted her face from Andric's chest.
"Yes… I think so?" Lizzy said, voice questioning the anxious look on her best friend's face as he stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, Olwen just behind him with a scowl on her usually friendly features.
"Oh good," Booker chirped, "because I'm getting a fairly strong precognitive sensation that Olwen's going to make me pay for that trick once she gets us in a ring of our own. I just wanted to make sure my intervention was worthwhile."
Lizzy looked at Olwen again, only to realise the scowl she'd thought the woman was sending Booker, was in fact the pain-filled remnants of whatever telepathic static he'd shoved into her head.
As for November 6th, I've just hit a patch that I wrote more recently. It's a scene between Booker and Lizzy that will reveal to anyone who doesn't get their hands on the preorder bonus, just exactly what's going through his head in this book.
But since it was written more recently, I already knew there would be less editing/rephrasing required.
What I didn't anticipate was that my first two sprints for November 6th have been over 1k each again...
Sprint 1; 1,137
Sprint 2; 1,151
Since I seem to be doing REALLY well today, and I've probably got one more sprint to complete this scene, I've taken a bit of a pause for dinner.
But after this scene, the next chapter is, in contrast, going to slow me down substantially.
It's a chapter that I haven't actually written yet.
During one of my "How do I get over this writing block?" sessions, I realised I needed a specific scene to highlight Olwen Pryce's character, and to foreshadow some things for the end of the book. So I have some "bits" written, I have some outline, I have some notes about what needs to be shown, and what needs to be foreshadowed, but the chapter itself still needs to get an initial draft down.
I'm hoping to just keep rolling with the sprints this evening, and get as much as I can done before midnight... which will hopefully mean my inevitably smaller word count tomorrow won't set me too far back on my total monthly goal.
So, I finished Nov 6th with 4 sprints, the last two were in the mid-900's words, so I did well, but I ran out of time before midnight to make much more progress 'today'.
Still, I'm not mad at a 4k day, and almost 25k total word count on day six ^_^
I'm hoping I have enough words in the bank, so to speak, to make up for this slow patch I'm about to go through with the first-drafting of the next chapter...
I did have an early night on November 28th, and I slept right through to 9am on the 29th!
I did some more on my sewing project, which is coming along nicely, and then hunched over a low table gave me a slight headache, which then got exaccerbated by an extrovert meeting with my dad.
So I took some pain killers, got some lunch, and went back to bed for a bit. Unfortunately! Because I really wanted to make a lot of progress today. I'm midway through a scene where Lizzy and [Redacted] reveal some things, and someone else finds out some information that is going to get carried forward into Book Three, and I'm excited, damn it.
It always happens like this...
In the end, between the headache, the sewing, and dad, I ended up not writing anything for the 29th, but the 30th I had a look at my numbers.
If I could get just over 5k, then I'd be at 175% of my original 60k goal. And something about that symmetry appealed, so that was my goal for today.
And it was a slog.
Because I've got a hospital appointment tomorrow, and I'm quietly freaking out about it. So I've been distracted mentally, and exhausted mentally and physically.
I keep falling asleep mid sprint.
But I've been workin on it since Midnight... and it's now 11.36pm... an I actually bloody did it!
So! Time for some "Last Day of Nanowrimo Final Stats!"
1) My final word count for November is 105,078 words
2) That is 175% of my original 60k goal
3) I had SIX Grace Days in November. Also known as Zero-Word Days. That leaves me one unused I'm going to rollover into December.
4) The Total Time I spent writing in November was 42 Hours 40 Minutes!
5) This takes the total time I've ACTIVELY WRITING on Darkling to 146 Hours and 50 Minutes.
6) Speaking of overall totals, this October-November period has brought the Darkling Manuscript up to a total of 125,737 words, and 41 completed chapters.
7) I'm currently writing Chapter 42, and predict based on my outline that there will be 46 Chapters Total.
8) Based on the average chapter size in Darkling, that is approximately another 14,000 words left to write.
All that to say I will be continuing Darkling into December, to try and get it finished before December 19th.
However, considering the hospital appointment tomorrow has already wiped out my spoons, and I've not even reached tomorrow yet, I suspect December 1st will be a zero-word day.
I predict the next update, post Nanowrimo, will be December 4th, but tell me, how did everyone else do this Nano?!
Share your stats, wins, losses, etc and let me know how you all did!!
Seriously, no idea what happened to the 27th of November. I had such plans and they just... never came to fruition.
So, an unanticipated zero word day. However, I did hear that a local pub/restaurant type place is hosting a Christmas Market on December 7th, so I've snatched up a table for the event and will be selling copies of Changeling at my first in-person event! Signed copies, Book swag, flyers for my Newsletter and "Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?", and all.
Should be interesting, at the very least Lol I have the bookstock I ordered for an event last year that was outdoors and I had to drop out of due to weather (Books don't like rain; who knew?), but I didn't anticipate finding an event this close to Christmas with stalls still available, so I was planning on looking for a local craft fair or similar next spring/summer.
But this will do! :D
As for November 28th... Slow. But we still made progress.
I had to go out to the shops and managed to do SOMETHING to my foot resulting in a massive bruise and a lot of pain, so that's decidedly distracting ever since I got home.
Regardless, we managed to push through for 1,855 words today, tipping the manuscript total over 120k!
Just a couple of days left for Nano, and I'm excited to see how Darkling continues into December!
I checked my outline and there's about 7-10 scenes left to write, and honestly, right now it feels like I've got a million scenes to write, and no time to day it, even though it's practically the opposite.
Anyway, I digress, I'm having an early night tonight, so catch you all on the flip side for the final two days of Nanowrimo 2025.
