The Edge of Death: Update #3

I’m writing when I can, going for both a notebook and a keyboard.

The Edge of Death, by the end of NaNo2018 remained at 50,004 words. As of this update, we are now seeing a pretty 66,372 and I have officially finished PART ONE and have moved on to PART TWO! The first 1/3 of the story was planned for 9 chapters. It finished off with an even 8. I know that through the first round of edits it won’t remain that way. There are a couple of chapters in PART ONE that is well over 10,000 and 15,000 words respectively.

In one month I wrote 16,368 words! Writing this past month has felt so good! I have missed these characters so much. I’ve already started seeing the problems a first draft always presents. And when worldbuilding isn’t there or I can’t quite get the character arch to progress the way I want, it’s hard not to become too discouraged.

There have been a few days where I haven’t written anything, but for the most part, I am doing my best to write every day. Another one of my goals had been to find a new writing location at least once a week. Since all the COVID-19 quarantines and shutdowns, that hasn’t happened. But I’m not letting it stop my creativity. Even if I have had days where I have only put in forty-six words.

I am gearing up to start PART TWO. Now this will be a much harder challenge going forward. I want to be done with this first draft by the end of July. Why July? The Edge of Death is already two years old and five to six months seemed like a good chunk of this year to finish writing the first draft. That puts me at two months to write PART TWO and two months to write PART THREE. Seeing as I only managed 16K words this month and if my word count trends continue, trying to hammer out 30K per month to finish this story is going to be trying.

The only time I have managed to write that much or more than that was because of NaNoWriMo. This past year I only managed over 40K words for NaNo. Even during this world crisis, I am still maintaining two jobs, so my time is highly limited. But I’m going to do my best. The word count is based on my self-appointed max words of 150K. I have no idea if that is going to be more or less than I’ll actually need, but I have eighteen chapters to write over the next four months.

More than anything I’ll be working to get the chapters done throughout each month than I will be worried about word count. I am still working off my original outline, tweaking and adding as I need. I’m worried about starting chapter nine. Through every project I have begun, every single one of them had something go wrong with chapter nine. Chapter nines are my writing curse. Add to the fact that this time that particular chapter is the beginning of a new part in the story, it’s the link between the beginning and the end. This time, chapter nine must not fail.