Word Count: 50079
I passed over the 50K threshold Tuesday night. After a 10K three-day weekend, I decided that I could get over the finish line in a day or so. Monday, I wrote about 2K, and Tuesday I wrote about 3K. You can view my stats here. This is my third NaNoWriMo win.
I’m not done yet.
I’m a little over halfway through my (constantly changing) outline, and my target word count is 90,000. After a day or two off, I’ll be writing about 1,000 words a day, which should let me finish The Coral Gate sometime in mid-January.
After that? Well, I need to get started on what I’ve un-creatively titled Son of Bodhisattva, a rework of my short story “Bodhisattva” into a 90,000-word novel. My friend Casey suggested I title it Emptiness, which is also a good choice. Another might be Moon Rabbit, a parable that’ll become more important in the story. The original short story will wind up being rewritten as the first two and a half chapters, leading into a religious struggle that envelops the entire US.
I also need to get crit for Dahlia, which has been sitting around for a few months since my last revision. It’s an odd bird: it began as a novella, which I realized was still far too short to tell the whole story adequately, so I expended it into a novel during last year’s NaNoWriMo. I really like it, but it has a few plot points that are too similar to The Knife of Never Letting Go (which I haven’t read), and I’m pretty tired of seeing post-apocalyptic YA, even if it does still sell. I’ll put it under the knife again after getting some feedback first.
I also have three or four short stories that I need to revise, get critiqued, revise again, and so on. I have revision constipation; I need to wrap up The Coral Gate, Son of Bodhisattva/Emptiness/Moon Rabbit, and another short story I started earlier this month, and then spend a year getting everything up to spec.
I’ll post occasionally about my progress with The Coral Gate. In the meantime, to my fellow NaNoWriMoers, it’s been a great month, we’ve all written some awesome stuff, and here’s to next year!