Past the Half Way Point

Thesis Diary 5-11 October 2020

Last week I mentioned that I was going to pump up my weekly goal. I’ve been hitting well above 5500 words per week, and I still feel I need to write more often. Now this post is probably going to be shorter than my normal post.

I have a lot going on and had to squeeze this blog in between other problems and deadlines. So, let’s just get to the meet of the matter.

Word Goal:

My goal was to hit 6500 words. I knocked that out of the park, in only two writing sessions I managed to get 8357 words. Bringing the WIP up to a total of 119,998 total words. I’m really happy with where it’s going and these next few chapters are some of the favorite that I’ve plotted out. But I’m still a ways from the third act still. Hence why I upped my goal.

I’m firmly thinking that the book is heading toward 180,000 words, not the 150K I originally thought. Again, I went into a lot of detail about that last week. This book was always planned to be massive but I tried to cut it back. Still got a long way to go.

Interesting Aside:

One of the many reasons I got Scrivener for this novel, was the ability to write each chapter separately and then organize them. With my novel written in 5 strict povs that rotate each chapter, and with lots of planned cliffhangers I assumed that I was going to write 2-3 chapters of one character and then split them later.

But found that I had no troubles writing the first 25 chapters in order without having any problems with changing povs and coming back to cliffhanger days or weeks later.

That was until I hit chapter 25. I got into a writing frenzy and 600 words past the planned ending of the chapter before I stopped that session of writing. I ended up taking that extra 600 words and cutting them into a new chapter and then I wrote the rest of the scenes after the cliffhanger. Hence why I wrote over 8000 words in two chapters, all in one pov.

Chapter 25 and 29

As it worked out the chapters were in Caitlyn’s pov. I have really enjoyed her story, and in hindsight I realize that I could have probably written an entire that was just HER story. I could have glossed over the other storylines in this novel and just written Caitlyn. I then could have given her students POVs. I could then also slow down and take a lot more time exploring the landscape and conflicts.

But I digress. The next novels will be smaller pov casts and individual arcs happening in and overall arc.

This week’s Goals

Again, shooting for 6500 words, also want to try and get in 3-4 write sessions. Chapter 26 is a Rune chapter and is the beginning of a multi-chapter action/horror arc. Planned for three chapters, it might go 4… I’m guessing at least 13,000 words.

Ok… losing steam… sorry for the short post, just lot going on.

This week is also he second half of my final is due, so I need to hand in another 15,000 words… and I need to give them an edit and a revision before I hand them in. Since I have to copy them into word before I revise them, then I have to go and add the edits back into the scrivener version. It becomes bit of a pain in the ass.