November hasn’t really been a writing month for me. In total I managed to write 3614 words in November bringing my final total up to 29,733 Not great then when the aim was 50,000 words. (my best month was October with 12,121 words)
But man have I learnt a lot. Number one, writing a book (I won’t say novel – there is no way I can compare what I wrote with a real novel) is not as easy as reading one. I already knew this, but the fact I can write a complete short story had led me to believe that maybe a full book wouldn’t be so bad. I was wrong; it is. My respect for authors, or anyone who has managed to keep going for the full 50,000 words or more, is immense.
Number two, planning really is the key. I had a pretty good idea of how to start, and a very rough idea of the direction of the end, but no real idea of how to get there. When writing a short story, this isn’t so much of a problem. Being so short we are focusing on just one or two issues. A book requires so much more.
Number three, I’m not very good at writing every day. Its ok when I have an idea or know what should happen next, but just because it requires me to write 410 words today did not work for me.
Number four, there is no way I would have written even this much in one month. Without the time to think about how my story was to move forward it would have stalled – this is where the planning comes in.
There is more I could say but those are the main points. I probably could have written more if I was happy to flesh things out with more detail or conversation etc, but part of why I like writing short stories is that you get to the point quite quickly.
It’s been an interesting project but I think I’ll concentrate on short stories for now.
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