Tag: NaNoWriMo

Weekly Update – Week 13

As of today, I have  worked 97 days in a row; over 3 months. I am close to finishing chapter 6. Then I will have to decide about chapter 7. Last week I did some editing of it and the remaining material may not be a chapter. It is possibly an extended anecdote but not a chapter.

My current plan is to finish chapter 6 and then the conclusion. After I have sent them to the editor, I plan to read the complete manuscript without chapter 7. I am reading it to see if the information in chapter 7 is necessary for my story. If it isn’t, then the bibliography will come next.

If I feel I need the information and material from chapter 7, I will go back and do that work. I am ahead of schedule, which is great. According to NaNoWriMo, at my current pace, I will reach my goal in early February. That would be spectacular.

BiWeekly Update, Weeks 11 and 12

It completely slipped my mind last week that I had a blog post to write. I gave myself the morning off. I attended Renewal services at the JCA which were lovely. After that, I went ice skating in Westfield. It was nice to take some time off.

As of yesterday, I have worked for 89 days straight. Today will be my 90th. I earned a badge from NaNoWriMo for reaching the halfway mark. According to them, I will finish on February 3rd. Of course, that just means I will have worked the total number of hours I originally committed to. It doesn’t mean that I will be done with all the work I need to do before I send the manuscript to the publisher,

I am currently working on the sixth chapter. I have already done all the editing of the 8th and final chapter. As I was working this past week, it occurred to me I don’t need chapter 7. I don’t know if I thought that because I really want to be done. That is one possibility.

My creative nonfiction teacher, Carolyn, emphasized the importance of avoiding redundant examples. I am now contemplating whether chapter 7 makes points I have already made or new ones. Deciding that will determine whether or not I keep it.

Eight Days to Go

I have completed 20 days of my self-initiated NaNoWriMo. This past week I worked a total of 610 minutes, a little over 10 hours. Today I worked for almost 4 hours, the longest stretch so far. It was very taxing, and my brain is fried.

I have been working on one of the “new” chapters that I created because of my new organizational structure. I put new in quotes because it is an amalgam of different parts of already written chapters so not something I wrote freshly from scratch.

After revising it, I am not sure I like it. I may want to go back to a previous version of the material. This whole revision process is two steps forward, one step back. I am not sure how much longer I can do this. September 10th will be 28 days and is my end date. I am going to blog on that day instead of Friday September 9th.

After the 10th, I am not going to start another regimen right away. I know I will need a break. Happy Labor Day!

%d bloggers like this: