update

Yesterday I added another 500 words after writing the blog entry. I ended the day with 50502 words.

Today I'm struggling to write anything. I think it's because I've reached the 50k and I know that as far as NaNoWriMo is concerned I've won. When the validator goes live on the 25th, theoretically I can enter my text and seal the deal.

However I haven't finished the draft and I don't want to validate unless it's finished. I now know how it ends and who the murderer is. I've avoided the obvious suspect and made the actions of the killer work with the people involved. I could just write a summary and leave it at that.

But I don't want to. I want to write the scenes. OK maybe not all of them, but enough to make it part of the novel rather than an outline. I'm hoping to add about 10k before the end of November. It would be really cool if I could make it to 70000 words, but that really is pushing it.

In December I'll probably keep writing the first draft scenes as there are some I haven't completed yet. Then in January next year, I'll start cutting and pasting the scenes until a book emerges. I've written quite a bit in a linear time line, but that makes no sense for the storyline. Some will become flashbacks, other scenes will simply not make it into the book, but it was still worth writing them.

Once everything is in the right order, I'll go through each scene and chapter again. This time I'll rewrite them. For some this will only be a tweaking, but for others it will mean a complete rewrite.

After that, and if I get that far, I'll need to send it out to beta readers. Then it's to the last edit run. Of course this is all very far in the future, but this story is the best I've ever written and that may not be saying much, but it means a lot to me.

This one I will finish.