February Novellas: One Week Left

February 24, 2016 - Reading time: 2 minutes

It's been 2.5 weeks since I started my novella writing binge. The experience, I must say, has been interesting. Like so many slightly outrageous goals one might set, it has been hard, but not in the way I expected.

In the beginning, hitting 2,700 words a day was actually pretty easy. My morning writing routine is well established, and writing 1,000 words before 8:00 am is as natural to me as getting dressed in the morning. While that alone wasn't enough, I found it wasn't difficult to add in a second writing period. After work, during happy hour, I'd just sit down and churn out some words.

What I didn't totally anticipate was the cumulative fatigue the extra effort would produce. The first couple weeks were fine, but then the mental strain of booting up and plunging into my story during my only real free time each day started to add up. I've had plenty of times in the past where I write 2,500 words a day on average, but that was all in one sitting, in the morning when my brain is at it's most agile and creative. Right now, my life is configured in such a way that I just can't spend enough time in "the zone" in the morning to produce 2,500 words. So I have to start twice each day. I'm finding it frankly exhausting.

Which means, I've fallen a little behind the last few days. Fortunately, my goal included padding. Brinlin Forest completed a couple thousand words shy of the word count I factored in. (40k is my upper limit, not my goal.) Also I had quite a few days early on where I went over budget. This means the race is not lost. I am, however, in a position where I have no "get out of jail free" cards left.

I've also hit that sticky middle stage of the third novella, where things are not beginning but also not quite ending. It's the hardest phase for me to write, always. 

My current goal is to push through this part of the novella tomorrow and Friday, then spend the weekend churning out the end. The end is almost always fast for me. Let's hope that holds true here.

UPDATE -10/40/2016: I did finish this project as planned, even though I failed to blog about it. After much editing and rewriting, this new series, Annals of the Brinlocks, is scheduled to release before the end of 2016.