Trips and holidays. This is why typically I don’t get much writing done in November and December. Thanksgiving is usually a gathering at our house. That kills November and is one reason why I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo—the National Novel Writing Month. Then December has always been crowded with special activities and sometimes a trip. So significant writing work is not possible near the end of the year, and I need to do really well in September-October if I want to make any writing goals happen in a given calendar year.
This year, since September and October were filled with special projects, I figured my writing production would be down. If so, it was for a good cause. The special projects dealt with disaccumulation in anticipation of future downsizing. I made progress toward that goal, and so feel good about the time spent.
We went to western Kansas for Thanksgiving. Returning home, finding the special projects mostly done (a few stray papers that defied decision-making still adorn my worktable in The Dungeon. But as we drove home after TG, I made up my mind that I was going to concentrate on my work-in-progress, the second book in The Forest Throne series.
Book 2 is titled The Key To Time Travel. It features the second son of the family, Eddie, who, in a bit of sibling rivalry, decided to use the time portal to travel in time. It doesn’t turn out to be the easy future-and-back followed by past-and-back he was expecting.
I began writing this in July. July 11 to be precise, though I’d been working plot lines out in my head long before that and had a few typed notes on what I wanted to accomplish. I did it when my #2 grandchild, Ezra, was here. In a couple of days, I had a prolog and the first chapter written, around 2,100 words. Ezra and Elise read it and gave me some thoughts., which I worked in.
Alas, that’s about when the special projects started, and the book sat. I pulled it up on the computer now and then, reading what I’d written and making a few edits. My writing diary shows me spending a little time in it on Sept 6 and 12, ending that day around 3,650 words. Since I want the book to be between 35,000 and 40,000 words, that meant I was a tenth of the way through.
We made the trip to West Texas in early October, and I used the time away from home to write on it every day. By Oct. 6, I was up to over 9,000 words. We came home, and there it sat, my time filled with household things. Oh, I opened the file from time to time and edited and added. By Oct 24 I was at 10,400 words, and somewhat pleased with where I was but lamenting that I had never been able to spend a lot of time on it.
Then we got home from our Thanksgiving trip, and I decided to make this my main project. Those minor things on wrapping up the special projects could wait. Filing paperwork could wait. Any end-of-the-year yardwork could wait. On November 28 I sat and worked on it. I had to re-read the last couple of chapters to see where I left off, and then I wrote. Only 500 words added that day.
On the 29th I started to get on a roll, adding almost 1,250 words, then 1,600 on Nov 30th. It kept going. The plot was so well established in my mind that I was able to write and not take a lot of time to ponder what I wanted to do. The additions came, as did a little editing on just-completed chapters. As I wrote, I found it easier to write the next day. Where I hadn’t thought fully through a plot line, a way to make it work came to me with barely a stop.
Fast forward to yesterday. At the end of my writing time, I closed the file with just over 27,000 words written. If my expectations for the length of the complete novel are correct, that means I’m only 9,000 words away from completion, and I should have it done in a week.
That’s the first draft, of course. Editing will take some time, as will running it by beta readers. But I can’t tell you how good this feels, to be back writing, to have good production, and to see a project nearing completion. I need to do that, because four or five other books are in the queue, shouting at me to hurry up and get to them.