Hi everyone, I wanted to write a quick update for how the first week of November has been and give an update on how NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is going for me. With my new story, that I’m currently calling ‘Once’ but that’s just a working title, I’m currently at 15134 words, hoping to be at 16000 by the end of today. When I wrote 2000 words the first day, I didn’t think I would keep that up for the whole week, but I have and am hoping to keep it up for the rest of the month as well. I think the story will end up being around 55000 words in its first draft and then get tightened and shortened down a little bit with each edit.

The story is completely different to anything I’ve written before, as it’s much more grounded. It’s not fantasy, or horror, just a straight forward story detailing a single day in the life of one person. The story starts a little before 8am and ends close to midnight, and so far I’m currently at roughly noon. I’m looking forward to people’s reactions to reading the story once it’s done. It’s more personal than anything I’ve ever written before, borrowing aspects of my own life. I’ve had people try to figure out who I am in a story, and I can safely say that I’ve never put myself in a character intentionally before. It’s still mostly fictional, though.

On average I would say that the daily writing takes about two hours, but that can vary quite a bit. Sometimes I get in a rhythm and can write non-stop until I hit the limit, but then days like today I end up writing for three hours and am only a little over half way there. I’ll get back to it later and hopefully it’ll come more easily.

I’m currently reading The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran, and have around 100 pages left. I’m hoping to finish it this week to post a review about it. I have very mixed feelings about the book. It’s supposed to be a horror, at least that’s how it was marketed to me, and yet it’s most definitely not a horror, at least so far. After that I have a ton of books to read and am hoping to get through a few of them in November.

Thanks for reading and until next time,

Ashley