Themeattics

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

Well, it’s over. I’ve checked the calendar a couple of times today – not that I needed to being Halloween and all, hard to miss all that going on – and the clock many, many more. Just did again, in fact, to see how much longer I have before the day rolls over and I’m fully out of the month. I don’t know if this will be a quick post or not. I’m simultaneously exhausted and wired, burned out and ready for more. I’ve hit the end just in time to start up again. But I covered the future last week. This is about the past three months, the lessons I’ve learned, and where it all ended up.

What a roller coaster. You can follow it from the start – the excitement of getting on the ride, the rush of progress at uncommon speeds, the licking of wounds after several defeats, the cautious optimism moving toward the end – all the way here. So, how did go?

I did it. I said I would, and I did. Honestly, right up until I wrote those words, I thought the victory would be overshadowed by the fact that I have to get right back on the horse starting tomorrow, but no. No, it feels pretty fuckin’ great if I do say so myself. Sorry for the expletive there, but I couldn’t think of a better way to say it. What did I have to do during these past thirty-one days to make it here? And how many words did I end up touching during that time?

Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up. There were five weekends in October, so that means five posts. These are generally low word count, so in the end that amounted to four thousand, two hundred and forty two words. Yes, I came back to edit in the number at the end of writing this to know the exact count. Words aside, hunting for a decent quote and cover image alongside writing the post tends to put me somewhere around an hour per post. Pretty sure I’ve said that before, but there you go.

Next comes the outlining for Catalyst, the novel I will be working on during NaNoWriMo. Again, I’m treading old ground here but outlining is new territory for me. I had previously completed the character interviews, so what I wanted to do to finish up prep was complete the character arcs and use those to devise the novel’s arc. Done and done, and I have to say, it was a fun process. Fun and, I hope, fruitful. Sure seems it will be – the character arcs felt bland individually, but working to mix them into a cohesive plot allowed me to see where I could inject the big moments and juice things up. And, unlike all the other times I’ve done this, it’s before I even write it. Who woulda thought? Imagine not having to fix everything after the fact when you blow up a plot line. Anyway, all said and done, I wrote ten thousand, eight hundred and twenty three words across the arcs. Solid numbers.

Now we get to the big boys. Contract writing comes in at number two with forty four thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven words. That’s not editing. That’s pure, post-edit final word count produced from October first until about two hours ago. Those words are spanned across the final acts of the game’s first season, as well as some outside work helping define my vision of the locations the characters were traversing during each stage of the game. If I’m lucky and managed to create something compelling, I hope this continues and I’m able to go on using my art for some extra income. Technically, this makes me a professional writer, and while that doesn’t put a novel on a bookseller’s shelf, it’s pretty damn awesome in its own right. Living the dream, really.

Last, of course, is Residuum. My baby. Now, this is certainly not all writing – a lot of it is just reading and making minor tweaks – but I wanted to know what I touched, not just what I wrote. That distinction was specifically because I didn’t want to take the time and effort to make the distinction between things deleted and new, yadda yadda, when going through editing. Sounded like a mess. Anyway, my time with Residuum clocked in covering fifty six thousand, one hundred and one words. I’ll be the first to admit some of that editing was rushed and I certainly don’t think it’s my best work, but it is to the point where I’m comfortable with letting those interested in giving feedback read it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, past me is screaming about that. Back there’s a great place for him to stay.

So, yeah. All in all, I went through a hundred and sixteen thousand, one hundred and forty three words this month. To break a rule and use both spelled out and symbolic numbers in the same article, that’s flippin’ 116,143 words. Hot damn that’s a lot. That’s too many. This month has been a blur of work. Get up, write, go to work, get home, exercise, write. I’ve neglected my family and feel pretty bad about that, but the month’s over. Sure, NaNoWriMo is about an hour away from kicking off, but I mean come on. That’s fifty grand.

Those are rookie numbers, kid.

Jokes aside, I’m excited for this. Now I know, for a fact, I can do it. I can even have a little bit of a life while I do. It’ll be hard, and it’ll require a lot of dedication, but I’m in that life. I’m there.

And, again, if you’re interested in Beta Reading or working with me as a Critique Partner, please do not hesitate to reach out. I’d love to get eyes on this thing. Eyes and criticism. Lord knows it needs both.