20 November 2012

NaNoWriMo - in progress


Over the past few years of blogging, I've found that my posts run about 500 to 750 words.  With my handy dandy new program (Writeway), I have acts broken to chapters broken to scenes.  I started with a mandatory 3 chapters per act, 3 scenes per chapter.  There are there in my outline, which is visible.  I can go back and forth, up and down.  The only thing is when I work on the synopsis, I need to break that down into the plot notes. So I started with 27 scenes.  I also write articles that are limited to 250 words.

27 x 500 = 13,500  750 = 20,250 words that are pretty much taken care of.  Then I have subplots that added another 27 scenes.  I added location descriptions=9 more scenes.  Prologue and Epilogue adds another six scenes.  Total = 69 scenes @ 750 words = 51750, @500 words = 34500 words (15500 short).

Because I know I can write my blog post in about two to three hours, what with editing and all, I know I need to write 3 scenes per day.  As I've fallen behind due to other commitments, I need to write four or five scenes per day to catch up.  Being able to see my outline as I write, which at this point has mostly blank spaces, is a great motivator.

So knowing the above breakdown, if I made my scenes level off at 750, I'm at my word goal.  @500 words, just need to add another 250 words to 62 scenes or add another subplot making 27 more scenes and add 250 words to 8 scenes.

Because this is the first year I've actually taken time to plan, I had a short synopsis to start with. Again, thanks to my handy dandy new program, I was able to write the synopsis while at the same time being able to look at an outline.  What I did in the past was use this outline to write my story.  Then didn't take time to look at my synopsis as I felt that was editing.  {Actually, a little laziness was the culprit as I didn't want to keep looking back and forth, then having to search after accidentally closing the documents.  Then, didn't like my desktop being cluttered-accidentally clicked open documents I had no interest in looking at.}

This year's synopsis is right there and I've fleshed it out.  And the little note cards are there, although I've only used one or two of them.  The character sheets are where I've filled out the things I need to remember.  And I actually imported one of the character sheets from my short story collection.  And any new stuff is entered right on the character sheet.

Gone are my spreadsheets, my documents for different parts of the story.  I have story ideas that will be transferred to this handy dandy program as soon as I find the time.  And there is a place for photos and such.  Not sure about this one.  Alas, I learned to my great disappointment, that I can fill up an 80GB storage device pretty fast with the pictures I take. {Currently, 4000 pics plus a couple full system backups.}

Well, aside from the fact that I'm started to ramble attributable to NaNoWriMo's shushing of the inner critic, inner editor, I'd like to say that I'm no longer a pantser.  My English teacher's words of wisdom all those many years ago have finally sunk into what my father affectionately calls my "little bird brain."

ChiMiigwetch to my fellow bloggers and authors, my faithful supporters among my family and friends.  And now, I'm off to NaNoLand once again.

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