Monday 26 November 2012

NaNo '12 winner - now to finish the story!


I passed the 50k mark in NaNo back on day 15, and currently I'm at 88,329 words. I made a wild stab and guessed I might have 20k more to go in the story, but quite honestly I don't really know where I'll finish up at. What I'm pretty sure I do know is that my story will, as usual, be bloated and in need of some slash 'n burn. But at least I don't think it'll get anywhere near my most bloated efforts of the past, which have been known to hit in the region of 150k. Yikes!

Ideally I'd like this story to be 85-95k at most, but to be honest I don't even know what the "recommended" wordcounts are for NA novels. Anybody got any thoughts on that? I know that people have always told me, "It should be as long as it needs to be", but honestly, a 200k YA romance is probably going to raise a few eyebrows for the wrong reasons...right? ;)

Anyway, my new goal is to finish the story itself by November's end. This way I will achieve one of my other 2012 goals, which is to rewrite my DAPHNE novel completely. Overall I can say I'm pretty happy with how I've gone, though there have been moments during November when I've been rather appalled at the absolute crap I've been writing. It's okay, though - that stuff will be fixed in revisions!

How have you gone during November with whatever you've been working on?


P.S. I read my first Jolene Perry novel
(that link is to my review which contains spoilers, beware!)
over the weekend,
and now I want more. MOOOOORE! :)

P.P.S. "Baby Faces Blogfest" sign-ups below (for info on this blogfest, check here).


22 comments:

  1. I'd say 80-100K makes a good NA novel. If the scenes are crucial to the story, then people will enjoy reading them. Beta readers will be invaluable to this process!! Let me know if you need one more. I love meeting new writerly friends :)

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    1. Hey Megan - I will definitely need some beta-ing eventually! Will look you up when the time comes. First though, I like to go over my works myself at least a few times, till I think I've done all I can :) Thanks so much for the offer!

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  2. Congrats on completing NaNo Trisha! I think its always better to over write then cut during editing. Well, that's what works for me anyway.

    ......dhole

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  3. Whoa, that is a HUGE word count for one month, I'm impressed! I still have a long way to go before my novel is complete but I got my 50K done so I'm happy! :D

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  4. Congrats! I can't imagine writing that much in one month. I'd think a NA novel is similar in size to an adult novel, so anything around 100,000 words is good.

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  5. Congratulations Trisha! YOu are a mean lean writing machine. I mean it! I can't even imagine how you get that kind of word count in 15 days. Editing won't be fun, I'm sure but then it never is. That's the part I hate-- I like that sentence! Is it really superfluous? Damn! Cheers!

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  6. Congrats! You're one speedy writer. I hope the rest of your drafting goes as smoothly as the first part!

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  7. Congratulations on all your productivity! I think I'm up to over 40,000 now, having started on 5 November. My own WIP is guesstimated to be around 450,000 words (it's a historical saga spanning 15 years and taking place in several different countries), so I'm nowhere near done.

    For NA, it probably depends on what the genre is. I always expect historical, fantasy, and sci-fi to be longer, while even I, a lover of thick doorstoppers, would wonder a bit at a contemporary novel or romance that was really long.

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  8. those baby faces are going to be so cute to see!
    congrats on your immense writing! wow! maybe its two novels...

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  9. Congrats on finishing NaNo, and good luck finishing the story! I'm plotting a new story right now. I've made some good progress, but there's still a long way to go...

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    1. You know what? I'm a few days out from the end of NaNo and I have been struck by inspiration for another story! So I had to plot that out a bit this morning before doing some more NaNo writing during my lunch hour at work ;)

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  10. Wow! I'm so impressed! Congratulations, and best of luck on finishing up.

    ~Debbie

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  11. Congratulations!!!
    And I mentioned your blogfest in the Ninja News. Hope you get a good turnout.

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  12. And I just noticed that you noticed. Crap, I need another energy drink to wake up...

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  13. Congrats on winning NaNo. Good luck with finishing the draft! :)

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  14. Congrats on beating NaNo! And I joined the blogfest. I was a pretty cute baby, so I may as well make it official...LOL

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  15. Congratulations on completing Nano!

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  16. Congrats on being a NaNo winner! Yay! Good luck finishing the draft. I still have another 40,000 or so left in mine to write, although I have crossed the 50k word mark to be a winner. :)

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  17. Thanks everybody! I'm still not done but hopefully there soon...argh!

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  18. That is great news, and a lot of words! I struggle still at 40K....Just can't stop going back to rewrite. Ahhh, someday I hope to get there!

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  19. Congratulations on being the NaNo winner, Trisha!

    All the best!

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Thanks for your words, me hearties! and don't forget to leave a link to your blog somewhere I can find it!