Winning

I’ve had an extremely successful July camp. It hasn’t always been easy but I’ve managed to average the 1,000 words a day I needed to reach my target of 30,000 words this month.

I started working on this manuscript in January. 55,000+ words later, my first draft of Spirits Saga: Book 1 is almost complete! These have been intense but exciting times.

Doing something like NaNoWriMo, you certainly find out what you’re capable of achieving, even with a full time job and other things going on in your life. For me it was is mostly a matter of planning, adapting but also being very disciplined: getting up an hour earlier or more to write each day, using lunch breaks to write even though the last thing you feel like doing is looking at a screen when you’ve been doing so all morning. At the heart of it all is my love for writing and desire to get my story down on a page – well, 145 of them to be exact.

I intend to take a little break for this week then finish the manuscript next week (under less regimented circumstances). The plan then will be to hone the first three chapters ahead of submitting for the Bath Novel Award. We’re midway through the third quarter of the year. Time to be decisive, objective and carry the momentum of this past month into a draft I can really work with.