Progress!

NaNoWriMo has been really interesting and challenging for me so far this year. I’ve decided to devote my writing time almost entirely to the final installments in The Entity series, and this posed a few challenges for me that I didn’t expect. While last year I worked on a book that hadn’t been written at all, this time I am continuing where my story left off in Episode Four and essentially going from the penultimate climax to the finale. The pressure is on, and I think that is a good thing!

So far I am partway through Episode Five, and it’s nearing 15,000 words. That’s not including the introduction and all the extra stuff, but just the meat of the story. There are some exciting things happening to Clarissa and Harrison that have been building up in all the other episodes, so I’ve been discovering more and more as the characters do.

I must say that watching a seance in a movie and writing a seance are two very different things. I hope this next chapter in the tale does not disappoint. I’m aiming for these two episodes to be the longest due to the amount of answers that need to be given and the twists that take place. All of these things are being juggled in my mind and in my outlines, and I have not forgotten that one of the Maxwells bites the dust by the end. Who is it? I’m not saying!

For those of you who are interested in the writing process, I’ve definitely learned a lot from starting this year’s NaNo. I would suggest that you give it a shot if you haven’t started already. Even if you don’t write the 50,000 words (a task that was easy last year, but seems very daunting this year for me) you can still exercise your technique and find out what works best for you.

For myself, I definitely need to start out with a rough outline. A few sentences about each scene. I list these off in order as a sort of checklist. Once I start a scene, I add a circle to the bullet point mark. Then, when I’ve completed the scene, I check it off. This is a great way to jump around in your story and know where you have holes and where you have made progress. It’s very cool to see all the days of work come together and fill in like a puzzle. If you get stuck, you can jump to some other scene that needs work. Maybe the solution to your roadblock will present itself by your next writing session. This has happened to me a few times.

To anyone trying NaNo this year, I say good luck to you! It’s very nerve-racking, but in the end, it’s totally worth it.

If you want to catch up on The Entity so far, you can find the first four books here in the US and here in the UK. Each one is a novellette or novella (whichever you prefer) and the approximate word counts are listed at the bottom of the descriptions. If you don’t want to buy each episode and would rather read them for “free”, they are also available to people who have a Kindle Unlimited account if you want to try them out before I finish the box set.

Happy Monday!