Howdy,
Another November rolls around, another month of NaNoWriMo. Several people from my writing group are participating this year. I’m not in the sense that I’m not going to try to write 50,000 in a month – get out of here! I’ve got a day job and kids to cart around and spousal obligations, like just about every other perspiring writer. Plus, I don’t know that 50,000 words are all that amazing unless they are 50,000 of the right ones. Take John Scalzi, for instance. He just presumably just knocked out 11,000 in one day to finish off his latest novel and shipped the book the same day off to his editor. Bam! That’s 11,000 of the right words, not 11,000 crappy words. Now, I don’t know how much copyediting goes into Scalzi’s work, but who cares when you have a copy editor at your beck and call, and you sell tons of books?
Like I said, I don’t plan to try to write 50,000 words in a month, but that’s not to say that I won’t. My YA WIP continues to practically write itself. Last month, I knocked out over 28,000 words. That’s up 8,000 words from September, putting me at a grand total of over 48,000 words. For me, this is fantastic progress. Before this WIP, I don’t think I’ve put down more than 12,000 to 15,000 words in a month. Wow!
I’m really happy word count wise with where the novel is headed. By my current calculations, the complete first draft will be about 95,000 words. If I follow Stephen King's rough and ready rule that the final draft is the first draft minus 10%, I’ll have a final word count of around 85,000 words. I think that sounds about right, 85,000 words for a YA novel, not too short and not too long.