As you can see from the NaNoWriMo Winner’s Badge, I met the challenge–writing 52,000 words in November!

After a false start with the first novel I set out to write in November, the characters of the second novel were glad to share their story with me. Given that I always take a day of rest on Sundays, that took a whole 6 days from my writing schedule, meaning I had to write about 2,100 words per day to make the 50,000. It was brutal!

At one point, I stalled, but the characters insisted I could get back on track by adding some alien-like beings into the story. Aliens! You’ve gotta be kidding me! This is a romantic mystery–not sci-fi! They insisted, and so it is, there are other-worldly characters in my (who am I kidding!) story. In fact, they worked in very well, adding some unexpected interest to the story. I’m sure it will put a smile on readers faces.

Now, the challenge is to finish the novel. At 52,000 words, it’s about 40% to 50% done, but there’s still a lot of story to tell–at least that’s what the characters are telling me! Then, of course, will come several rounds of heavy-handed editing to tighten the story up, and make sure it’s all cohesive. One of the perks of winning NaNoWriMo is that I could purchase Scrivener, a writer’s software, for half price–which I did. For the last few days, I’ve been stuffing my manuscript into Scrivener, and learning how to use all its features. I write more on Scrivener in a later post.