53 Days, 76K Words

I joined Twitter late last summer. Around October, writers started talking about this thing they hashtagged as #NaNoWriMo. It took me a little while, but I figured out that NaNoWriMo was a project/contest/writing thing where people spent the month of November writing a novel. At the time, I was amazed. Writing a novel in one month? No. Way. I followed writers’ progress, shocked at how fast some people were getting those words down.

Because I definitely didn’t have the fastest writing record:

The novel I wrote in high school took me many months, mostly because it was more for fun than actual, goal-oriented writing. Also, it was total crap…though I had to start somewhere.

The novel I wrote in college took me all of the fall semester and most of the spring one. Of course, at the time I was taking a full course load, including Quantitative Chemical Analysis and the accompanying interminable lab, which still makes me want to run as far and fast as I can in the opposite direction. This novel wasn’t complete crap, but definitely wasn’t good enough to query. (Though I tried that anyway because I didn’t know what I was doing.)

The Paris novel I wrote a few years ago (during the only span of my life—other than my Parisian semester of college—where I lived alone) took me about five months, plus revisions.  It was the first novel where I had some idea what I was doing. It also was the first novel I seriously queried. It was like a trial run for the whole process.

After my Paris novel, I wrote WORLD’S EDGE, the YA sci-fi novel I’m currently querying. I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t really keeping track, but I’d say that one took me somewhere between four to six months. Oh, plus the three months I spent on serious revisions after I met my critique partners.

I also wrote a sequel to WORLD’S EDGE. This one took me over a year. No joke. Of course, I’d just bought a house with my (then) fiancé, then I was planning my wedding, then getting married, then querying the Paris novel like there’d be no tomorrow, then submitting WORLD’S EDGE to contests. So, no surprise it took me a year. As I was putting the finishing few thousand words on it, I was watching those NaNoWriMo people write their novels in just thirty days.

I was so impressed by NaNoWriMo people, wondering where they found all their writing time—because, like me, most of them had full-time jobs, families, friends, non-writing lives. By December, I was too busy with all my writing stuff to give #NaNoWriMo and the demanding goals much thought.

But then in March, just two months ago, I started thinking about writing again. I’d gotten to a point where I wasn’t spending four or five hours a day working with my critique partners’ novels or on WORLD’S EDGE revisions. Also, I was reading more. I was gathering ideas, plot points that had seen so disparate before but were connecting in fascinating ways the more I thought about them. I was outlining a new novel.

On March 26, I started writing that novel. I had a less lofty goal than NaNoWriMo writers—I planned to write 1,000 words per day, which would mean I’d need about 65-75 days—but as I wrote, I thought about them. Some days were so busy that I had to squeeze a few words out in a few short minutes. There were only three days where I didn’t write at all. (Because I think strep throat and a weekend with my parents count as good excuses for not writing.)

Still, it didn’t take me 65-75 days. About an hour ago, I finished that novel. It took me 53 days to write 76,000 words. Not NaNoWriMo speed, but I’m still shocked I wrote it that fast. Like any first draft, it needs some revisions…but I feel good about this one. In fact, I love it. I can’t wait until it’s ready to send to my critique partners.