Day Forty-five - 85,839 words and counting

I'm writing a novel. All my progress can be found on my private blog. The commentary for each day's work can be found below.

They're just sitting and watching the rain. Why won't they leave my table?!?

I must be a creature of habit, because the loss of my favorite table has hobbled me this morning. Instead of immediately launching into writing, I've spent the last half an hour rewriting the macro that I use to update my statistics down there. Yes, I wrote a VBA script in Excel to same me the trouble of doing it all with a calculator. I'm such a nerd.

Of course, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I didn't write anything yesterday. Sure, I did a bunch of outlining, but what of that? It's not word count, and word count is the goal these days.

Good... they're leaving. Slowly, but surely. Come on, put on your coats... that's it... no, stop talking about your grandkids, they're not here. Clean up your trash.... free!

Oh, that's better. Now I can write.

But what shall I write? Biggest question to start with is whether I should begin with a prologue, or just launch into Chapter 1. It all depends on which tactic I plan to use. I decided that I wanted to structure this novel, or at least the early chapters of it, through flashbacks. In other words, the story picks up several years after the last one ended, and the reader isn't sure of what happened during that time. In fact, part of the mystery is going to be how Bryony and our other characters wound up where they are in the future.

I'm going to flashback to the time that the last novel ended, do some scenes there, and then return to the future. I'll need a way of distinguishing them, so I decided that a different setting would serve that purpose. You'll see what I mean at the end of the first scene.

Okay, so if I were to structure the opening scene as a prologue, it would make less sense to return to that time period later. Doing it as chapter 1 makes more sense. That's what I will do.

Now I'm excited about getting started. More on the flip side of writing.

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I am free to change my mind, of course. And by the time I finished the opening section, I decided it was a prologue after all. So there.

I like it. I think it sets up the book pretty well, and allows me to jump time periods however I like. The trickiest part will be the transitions, to make sure the reader can follow the timeline, but I think I can manage that.

So, chapter 1 starts tomorrow, and tomorrow morning at that! Remember, I've committed to a 10am and a 10pm release tomorrow, so we may just see the end of chapter 1 too.

Today's Total: 1,970 / 1,689 words (116.6%)
Nov. Progress to Date: 26,612 / 25,335 words (105.0%, 0.8 days ahead)
Nov. Total Progress: 26,612 / 50,670 (52.5%)
Book 2 Est. Completion 1,970 / 84,450 words (2.3%, 49 days to go)
Est. Completion: 85,839 / 250,000 words (34.3%, 97 days to go)