October 2021 Challenge - Build a Writing Habit!

Nether

has been brought to a creepy mansion in a cemetery
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My October 31st is still ongoing (but I've already broken 6k words)

I got to the "end" of book 8 in the morning, only realize I have *five* placeholders, one being for a key character description (ugh), with another being for a whole *chapter* intended to split a scene because I'm changing POVs (which technically I can do without, but the switch might feel jarring)... so... not anywhere near as finished as I thought. I guess past-Nether played a bit of a trick on present-Nether, which is sure to leave future-Nether with a headache.

Oh, and my keyboard is starting to malfunction, so there's that. I know I have at least 1-2 others somewhere, but I may need to just buy another one (or see I can scrounge one)
 

Lea123

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DAY 31

- Read through and corrected another scene (1,234 words, a very pleasing number).
- Got an idea forming for a link between two events. What I currently have is okay and does the job but is marked for a rewrite anyway as I wasn't even entertaining myself. Anyway, the idea is bubbling away but not solid enough for me to grasp and shape yet. Annoying but I know if I'm patient, it'll come.
- Sat and cried in the shower because a poor character is having a :poop: time and there's literally no one she can offload to at the moment. She's lost one twin and trying to hold it together as she needs to keep the other safe (neither twin knew/knows she was their real mother either so she's also feeling regret / guilt for lying). I feel awful, like I'm some horrible person and then on the other I'm crying over something that isn't even 'real'... but it is what it is.

Looking forward to seeing what November brings - good luck to anyone attempting Nano! I'm going to give it a crack next year.
 

Lea123

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Lea -- Sounds like you had a productive day. And that's 200k words on the novel itself? I keep thinking I'll eventually write a long fantasy novel, but... I think I probably would play it safe by sticking to no more than 130-140k words.

Yeah... it's more like 190,000 now and there's at least another 5k to cut. That's the length of fantasy I like to read though but I know the market isn't great for newbies with things that are that length!

I'm currently looking at what could be moved to book 2 as the scenes have a purpose. Condensing only culls so much.
 

CMBright

Cats are easy, Mice are tough
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Almost 5k words so far today on my WiP, more off days than on this month due to sleep troubles.

Hope those will be sorted soon.
 
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Cindyt

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Day 31

DAY OFF ON THE LORD’S DAY

Gatteau – I feel like I know mine too. Our maternal reunion book mentions a girl “who died in the bloom of her life.” I’ve always felt close to her. In Dress Her in Chameleon, my MC is named Naomi (Mimi) after my Great-Grandmother.

Imaginaryist – :welcome: Good luck with your goals. Hope to see you in November!

Neither – :Hug2:

Woolly - Wowzer on 1k, and good going on your WIP’s 4000-word count!

Helix - Grats on 3 sales!

CMBright – WTG on 5k word count



See you in November, Everyone!
 
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Gatteau

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Day 31: no actual words, but an extra little bit of research in preparation for NaNo beginning tomorrow... I think I'm ready for it. I at least know how it's going to start. Just hoping the pretty new notebook I ordered shows up so I can start writing in it!
Gatteau -- I imagine a group of writers would make an interesting heist crew with their unusual set of knowledge. (And the robbery itself could be research for a book!)
Ooh, yes, I'm sure we'd be great at that! Who's in? :e2brows:

See you all in November! :hi:
 

TStarnes

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Day 31
Not going to break it down by story because all I did today was rewrites to completely change out a subplot. I feel dumb that it took me so many chapters to realize it wasn't working. Had I caught it sooner, this could have been fixed in a few hours instead of a day and a half.

As ends of the month goes, not great. But I'm almost finished and should be able to start moving forward again by day 2 of November.
 
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Nether

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Day 31 wound up just being the 6,088 words, because I didn't get around to filling in the placeholders. (The "just" in this instance referring to the amount not changing, not that 6k+ wasn't a productive day.)

The delay mostly came down to the fact I still had to do that crit partner stuff, which ate a bit of time, and then I was exhausted so I needed a short nap (actually, I needed a long one, but just took a short one).

Rather than trying to fill in those gaps right now, I'm thinking I'll just take care of it when I do my continuity read / proof (and maybe not spend as much time trying to polish other elements to save time). The placeholders are a bit harder than usual since it's a multi-POV, so I really need to review the earlier chapters just to see what would work in context.

So ultimately I fell kinda just short (or maybe slightly short on a technicality) of finishing the first drafts for 8 novels since coming back to fiction writing last November. And, honestly, other than one character detail I need to fill in, what I have now could pass for the full book since I can get around the "placeholder chapter" by rearranging my chapters and the "incomplete" POV chapter was more just I wanted to make it longer (since it'd already touched on the important parts, but it was on the short side). idk, I hesitate to call it a "finished" first draft, but it effectively is a finished first draft.

That said, the revisions for this one are going to be rough. The final section -- including everything I wrote today -- will likely need heavy revision, particularly since the epilogue's tone doesn't feel consistent with the rest of the book. (And the last chapter is essentially an epilogue because the final confrontation has an abrupt conclusion.)

************
*********
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Woolly -- Grats on the 1k

CMBright -- Grats on the almost 5k

I'm currently looking at what could be moved to book 2 as the scenes have a purpose. Condensing only culls so much.

tbh, I've done something similar to that a few time. When I was going to run long on one of my books, I finally decided to just handle an entire arc in the sequel. And another book I realized I had a lot of dialogue, etc, setting up the future books *after* the main threat had already been resolved, so I wound up deciding to just add an extra book to the roadmap to cover that and other loose plot points.

And I'm almost certainly going to run into the issue with not being able to condense enough in my first novel. A few things would actually make more sense in the sequel; for example, book 2's antagonist first appears in book 1, but right now he reveals major plot points and his plan is only possible as a result of book 1's events (that and intro'ing him in book 2 would make book 2's first twist even more obvious). However, right now it's 102k words and needs to get down to 70-80k, if not less, since it's YA and it's an auto-pass from a lot of agents just given the length.
 

Unimportant

No COVID yet. Still masking.
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Day 31
Not going to break it down by story because all I did today was rewrites to completely change out a subplot. I feel dumb that it took me so many chapters to realize it wasn't working. Had I caught it sooner, this could have been fixed in a few hours instead of a day and a half.

As ends of the month goes, not great. But I'm almost finished and should be able to start moving forward again by day 2 of November.
Wow, you and I are writing the same story!

Ten bucks says you'll finish waaaay before me, though..,.
 
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Pacific

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Seems November starts with good drama, hsa.