Over the weekend, I reached my first major goal: 25,000 words. The novel I have to turn in this May must be 50,000 words in length, so at least in regards to my word count, I’m halfway there. I’m not halfway done with the work that must be completed, of course. I spent roughly four hours today editing and re-editing previous scenes and chapters. A lot of that work remains to be completed. I have to turn in the first half of the book by the end of March 22. The week of March 14-18 is spring break and we have plans that week, so I need to have everything ready to go before that weekend.
One problem I’ve run into is that my overall plot is too short to fill 50,000 words. I originally planned a long act one, a short act two and a short act three. I’m already dipping into act two near the end of my 25,000 words. I’m going to have to expand one, two, or all three of the acts to meet my final word goal. It makes me think about how I would write a longer work, one of 80,000 or more words. I guess you either need longer scenes or more of them.
Congratulations for hitting the milestone!
It is a definite challenge to write to a particular word limit… quite the interesting exercise as well.
I did the nanowrimo thing several years back, and found that to be simultaneously quite difficult and fun. As I drew to the end, I found myself expanding just about every scene… and when that well went dry, I had to create new scenes and try to fit them into the narrative as seamlessly as possible.
I know where you’re coming from… however, come May, you’ll have a both a great book and a wonderful feeling of satisfaction.