Saturday, November 15, 2014

NaNoWriMo 2014 – Day 15

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Current word count: 28,535
Word count goal 15th day: 25,005

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NaNoWriMo is now half over for this year! Hard to believe it’s already Day 15. Also hard to believe there are still 15 more days to go!!

I hope it doesn’t sound pretentious. But, it’s actually been going a lot easier than I expected. A couple of days I hit a wall of sorts. But, other than that, I’ve found it easy to put down the required 1667 words for the day goal to keep on pace to write 50,000 words in the month of November. In fact, I’ve usually done more than what was required so I’ve now built up a little wiggle room in case something comes up.

I think on of the reasons I’ve been able to keep the pace up is that I have jumped around a bit, rather than writing from beginning to end. I will have to go back and figure out where my story holes are, and then fill them in. But, it’s made it easier writing chapters as they came to me, or I was inspired, rather than trying to co it the old ways of page after page.

When I was at the Berkeley Public Library South Branch today, for a write-in, I was able to blast away 2900 words in one session! Just got there, stuck my ear buds in with Music Choice’s Light Classical channel playing at a low level in the background on my laptop, and then typed away. Before I knew it, it was three hours later.

I’ve been able to stumble upon some books through the library which really illustrate how things were back in the 1860s.

One particular book I actually look forward to reading at another time when it’s not purely for research. Thanks to the Albany Public Library’s Link+ connection I was able to borrow it from Cal State-East Bay.

Overland Explorations in Siberia, Northern Asia and the Amoor River Country was written in 1860, and chronicled Major Perry McDonough Collins’ trip through eastern Russia and China, as he envisioned building the Russian American Telegraph Company. The goal to eventually encircle the world with telegraph lines.

A really fascinating thing is that the book I got was actually printed in February 1864! (Yes, the book was 100 years older than I am!). Though it appears to have received a new hardbound cover along the way, it was a real treat to touch pages that were printed so long ago.

If anybody else decided to take up the challenge, feel free to leave a comment below on how you’re doing! I’ve love to hear from you.

This may be the last blog entry until I either cross the 50,000 word finish line (sometime around Nov. 27th or 28th), or it’s December 1st, the day after NaNoWriMo officially ends. I haven’t decided.

And don’t ask me if you can read what I’ve written so far. As I pointed out above, it’s not being written in order, so there are come glaring holes big enough to drive a Peterbilt truck through, and with the pace I’ve been writing I expect it’ll take another 50,000 words to actually finish the book.

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