Climbing Over the Rough Patches

In the first week of April No-No I succeeded in breaking every rule I established for myself! Not only did I go back to the beginning and re-read the entire manuscript, but I also edited a bit here and there, in particular the last two chapters. I couldn't help it! Now I know how an addict must feel, trying to kick the habit.

Still, I managed to bring the story forward about 5k words, from 24k to 29k. That's only half the 10k progress I wanted, but I got a lot out of it. I'm not worried that I didn't make 10k -- I never wrote evenly during Nano; it came in bursts but still I made it to 50k for the month. I should still reach 40k by the end of April.

The past couple of chapters have definitely been rough terrain (hence the photo of the dune buggy). It's been a wild ride, but I'm hanging on and things are not as bad as they might be. I do know the plot; I'm just working out the details. I didn't plan this story in extreme detail because I wanted to allow myself the "joy of discovery" -- what was I thinking?! (haha)

I feel by having a specific word count goal I did get more accomplished this past week than I might have otherwise. I'll keep the goal in place and work harder this week to meet it. I hope to finish that missing 5k this weekend and get the new week's 10k done by next weekend.

I'm into Chapter 9 already and the first scene is EXCELLENT. It's the sort of stuff I want to do, and here I am doing it! Not only is this the quality and nature of the material I'm aiming for, in this case it came out clear and well-written the first time through. Exciting!

And the writing goes steadily on,

Adrian