As noted here (with embedded link to David Levine’s report) (well we ARE writers after all), an excellent writerly weekend at the coast was accomplished.
And yes, as Jay mentioned, I wrote 7,000 words on OUR LADY–4,000 on Saturday and 3,000 on Sunday. I’ve certainly written that much in a day before, but I hadn’t yet on this novel–my biggest days thus far had been just about 2,500.
This has been both deliberate and situational–deliberate, because in the past when I have tried for a very high word count day, I’ve run into trouble when the story gets ahead of the plot, or my outline, or my imagination (the famous dragon problem–wherein I don’t know what happens next, so a dragon appears)–and situational, because I just haven’t had that kind of time.
I did break up the writing into sessions of not more than 2,000 words at a sitting, separated by a span of time where I did other things–read, walked on the beach, ate thousands and thousands of calories. 🙂 So I think that helped, and it made it good, productive writing. I even discovered a plot hole from earlier in the book. I didn’t fix it, because I was pressing ahead; I just set out some orange cones and yellow “danger” tape around the area and moved on. Esteemed Co-Author can address it.
But now I am gifted with a week of more than enough time to write, and I’d like to see if I can push it–to maybe 3,000 a day. I’m at almost 93K on the book, and well into the final act of the plot arc. I would call this the closing part of the diamond of the book, where all the threads are coming back together towards the inevitable conclusion, except it occurs to me that this is not a very thready book. It’s basically one person’s story–a quest-in-place, almost, and it’s been told almost entirely from her POV. I’ve had a few other POV characters who have had small scenes here and there, but that’s mostly dropped off as I’ve pushed the MC towards the end of her story. That problem will be fixed in rewrite–either by changing it entirely to her POV or adding in more scenes from other POVs. I suspect the latter, because that will help with the pleasing complex threadiness that we all love (and expect) in novels; but, that is up to (yes) Esteemed Co-Author.
Oh, he has his work cut out for him, the Co-Author does. 🙂