Non NaNo 2011, Wrapup

Time to celebrate!

November is over and so is my Non NaNo challenge. Time for a huge sigh of relief and a moment of thankfulness.

My goals for November were:

• Finish the second draft of Saving Grace
• Finish the first draft of SG 2
• Word Count Goal for the Month (Fiction Only): 75,000 words

The results pretty much speak for themselves.

• 2,057 words written on Saving Grace this month but the manuscript is still unfinished
• 111,888 words written on SG 2 this month and the manuscript ended the month only chapters away from completion
• 113,945 total words of fiction written

Two November goals were met or nearly met.

The successfully completed November goal was the straight word count goal. I wanted to write 75,000 words of fiction, which I thought would finish one of the two manuscripts. I didn’t expect to finish the month with 113 thousand plus words of fiction, but after my first National Novel Writing Month experience in 2009, I’m not surprised.

I am very pleased to see the percentage of total words written to fiction words written is so much better this November than November 2009. In 2009, I had to write 166,246 words to complete a 78,000 word manuscript (Saving Grace). This year, it took 136,843 words to get 111,888 on the primary manuscript. A much better percentage.

And, a good indication of the productivity of judicious planning and allowing an idea time to marinade.

Nearly met was finishing the first draft of SG 2. I wrote the last two chapters on December 1 and did the last review on December 2. The story is now ‘cooling off’. The first round of review and editing will begin either after mid-December or after the first of the year, depending on how studio projects go.

The disappointment for the month is that Saving Grace wasn’t finished. I chose not to finish it before going to work on SG 2 and that proved to be a wise decision. Very little was done with Saving Grace and it still remains pretty much where it was at the end of October.

Even so, it was, all in all, a very good writing month and the past two months have been exceptional. A great way to lead into 2012.

With one goal accomplished and one goal nearly accomplished and under evalutation, I’ll be turning my attention to the studio a couple of portraits that need to be done by the end of the year.

That doesn’t mean I’ll be abandoning writing, but writing will move from the front burner to a back burner. Not always an easy thing!