First Goal Met

Dear Shell,

Today I met the first small goal that I had set for myself, in my journey to write a Nanowrimo novel. I hit just over 15,000 words this afternoon, and still have more writing to do today. I am behind on where I should be for word count, technically I should have a minimum of 20,000 words by the end of today in order to stay on schedule, but I have to say, I am very happy to hit 15,000 finally. And the more I can get written today, the less I'll need to catch up later.

Most of what I have written in my life has been poetry and short stories, and some aborted attempts to write a novel. This current novel is the longest story I have ever written, and I'm not done yet! I still have plenty more to write about before I reach the end of the story.

Will it fill 50,000 words? I don't know. I may have to go back and do some editing to add more in to the earlier story, if I hit the end of the story before 50,000 words.

Will it be good? Well...no, it's a first draft. It's not supposed to be perfect on the first draft. That's why it's called (drum roll please) a first draft! But I think it has potential. I hope it has potential. I'm enjoying the story, even when I'm sitting here staring at the screen yelling 'do something' to my characters. And of course, they decide to do something finally, and it's not always following the outline I had set out.

Outlines can change though; I've altered, changed, and re-written my outline a few times so far. I know how I want the story to end, but my characters are deciding how they will get there.

Shell