Hi everyone - newbie here - sort of.... As you may see from under my avatar, it's been a while since I joined this forum - but I haven't been around much. Things happened in my so called Real Life, to keep me away from the net for more than a year.
Back now, picking up the bits and pieces of my life (those of them still lying around, that is) and happy to be here again. This novel challenge is a great idea - one of the pieces I'm seriously picking up is my WIP - a novel that has been in the works for 3-4 years now and is about two third (three fourth?) finished. About time to get it done!
I haven't done much since Christmas, but plan to get serious as of tomorrow. I won't set any word count per day goal, though. I don't work that way. I'm the kind who must edit as I go - I need to get every paragraph/scene/section I work on perfect (= as perfect as I can make it) before I continue. Should I just type away to meet a certain word count, my inferior writing would make me lose both momentum and inspiration and in the end interest for the whole thing. That would be pointless - a sure recipe for failure. So, I can't predict how long each sentence/paragraph/scene will take me to write. In the past, I have rewritten and rewritten and rewritten certain scenes for up to two weeks before I was satisfied - which would average something like 10 words a day... At other times, I've finished a longish chapter in less than three days. So word count won't reflect very well how hard or not I work.
Instead, I'll report the time spent with butt in chair every day. I'll try to do a two hours a day minimum, starting tomorrow. That way, it ought to be possible to have the whole thing finished by the end of May, unless I run into some serious trouble with certain scenes, and get stuck for weeks again. Wish me luck!