Novel Idea: 70k

Today is a really, really good day.

I have reached the final golden number on Blood Rose: 70,000 words. It is now officially a novel and I am chuffed to bits to be writing this post. 

It has taken me five months to get from 20,000 to 70,000. For a few weeks I managed to implement quite a successful 1k a day routine, but for the past month I've written hardly anything at all. Then, in the past three days, I wrote 3, 654 to arrive twenty minutes ago at 70,036.

What changed? Well, I got a deadline. I accidentally inherited a writing forum, and one of the new volunteers I've taken on has set up an interest group for NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, which runs every November. The idea being to write a novel of 50k minimum in thirty days. 

I know I'm cheating, but I made an oath to finish a novel this year. A year is too long a deadline to really mean much, but a month is just perfect. The group is full of interesting people all doing the same thing, and it's really injected me with a sense of enthusiasm. I'm also a bit of a maniac when it comes to deadlines. I like to get things in early, to beat the deadline. I don't subscribe to the Douglas Adams school of timekeeping ("I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."), I like to stay on top of things. Hence, one week before NaNiWriMo even starts, I've crossed the final threshold.

Anything from hereon in is an added bonus. I can't see the end yet, but I know it's gonna be good. I have loved every minute of this one, which is probably why I've been dragging my feet over finishing it. Writing a good book is as hard as reading one when it comes to the final few chapters.

Still, I'm aiming to get there by the end of the month. 

Definitely by the end of the year.