November turned into my most epic writing month ever, and it played out like I’d hoped it would in the post I made on NaNoWriMo Eve. Instead of working on two stories though, I ended up with three.
Here’s how things turned out:
- Breakaway & Score (a.k.a The Leo & Matt Novella): I finished the first draft on November 14, six days earlier than expected. The draft topped out at just over 40k. Shortly after I finished it, I also started editing since it’s due at the end of December. I’m pleased with the story and I’m excited to get it finished up so it can come out on schedule in February. The story finds Leo & Matt just after their 10th anniversary and dealing with the fact that they’re not where they want to be with their relationship. It’s an interesting look at how a romance evolves over the years and how factors outside the relationship can influence it.
- Hat Trick 3 Missing Chapter: A Very Rainbow Christmas: This short story could be considered as Chapter 35.5. It falls just before the chapter where Simon and Alex are home for Christmas break and it features the Rainbow High youth team’s Christmas party. The point of view is TJ’s, which of course is very different from the rest of HT3, but it also harkens back to an early version of the book where other characters were going to have POV instead of just Simon (although this scene wasn’t part of the original draft). I love this short and it paves the way for something I want to write in late 2016 that focuses on the youth team. This draft finished at 2,700 and finished in a couple days. This should be up as a free-read on this website by the weekend as I’ve already made the first-pass edit on it.
- Tracker Hacker (Codename: Winger Book 1): I cranked out over 30,000 words on on this first draft and I had a blast doing it. Writing Theo is more fun than I thought possible. At the rate I’m going with this, I should have the first draft done before the end of January, and possibly sooner if I can strike a good balance between writing for this and editing Breakaway & Score. A few weeks ago I introduced Theo to the people who get my email updates. I’ll post that up on the website late this month so everyone can get familiar with this new character.
Overall in November I wrote just over 70,000 words. I’ve never managed that much and it was exhilarating to go past the NaNo 50k goal on November 21 and then creating another 20k. Even the trip that happened the week of November 16 didn’t stop me as I did more than the NaNo minimum all but one day (and that one day I was only 300 words off).
Hopefully this is the beginning of a new pattern of writing where I’ll do these sprints every day no matter what (as I write this I have to cop to not doing that so far in December between a work trip and editing on Breakway & Score, but I’m hoping to right that wrong as this week gets started). What I’m sure of is that 2016 is going to be awesome as I understand how to write more, faster.
