NaNoWriMo 2023 Midway Update

Midway through NaNoWriMo!

Is anyone else behind on their goal?

As a reminder, my goal for this NaNaWriMo was to edit 100 pages

of my WIP ‘Stagnant Water’, which wrote in May 2023.

One edited page = 500 words in the NaNoWriMo tracker + added word count.

After writing this morning, I'm clocking in at 19,500 words.

39 Pages Edited!

I’m behind 14 pages, which isn’t too bad. The choke point was Chapter 4, which is the most important chapter in the first quarter. There were changes to:

• Character roles/character condensing

• Setting tweaks

• Motivation changes

• Entire scenario rewrites

• Fleshed out dance scenes

Then after that was a really hard and really long, sex scene. Do I have to say more? 

Dancing, fighting, and fucking- three trickiest scenes.

Now I’m editing Section 1B. For me, that's the section that happens right after the inciting incident. Before starting on my edits, I had to re-outline this section (I didn’t count any of that towards NaNoWriMo, thus I’m more behind). It had all the right pieces, but everything was in the wrong order and paced strangely.

With a clarified outline, I anticipate getting through the rest of 1B smoothly. The rest of it is up in the air. I foresee re-outling before editing every section.

Just for fun, I break my stories up into Four Quarters and break each quarter into Two Sections, A&B. (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B- and so on…) I think this came about because ‘Save the Cat’ was what I used as my primary writing outline when I was first learning.

If you are behind like me, don’t despair! As long as words are getting written or pages are getting edited, you’re doing a good job. Not all projects flow easily. And not all Novembers are smooth and chill. Keep writing!