Visual Progress

As Nanowrimo is long gone, and as I've said already, I've created my own spreadsheet to chart my progress. Feeling pretty good this morning as I have reached 30,000-words and probably just over the halfway mark in the story too. Still on course for over 60,00 words. The chart's really helping inspire me to keep going and to stop me from self-editing as I write.

Here it is!

A fontastic breakthrough

It might sound crazy but one of the things I find hardest about writing is choosing a font and paragraph style that I am comfortable with. I find that it really affects my mood and can affect the mood of what I'm writing, too. I like to define different writing styles ( a different narrator, say) by using a different font. It's an aid memoir to me to know what tense and tone I need to use, and hopefully helps the reader, too.
Until this morning I was typing directly into my chosen template for Lulu (http://www.lulu.com) but was becoming so obsessed with how a finished 'book' would look on the page that it was interrupting my flow.
I've reverted to typing into a normal A4 format, in basic Times Roman (12pt) with a 12pt space between each line and I find I can spot errors more easily. It's easier to write, too.
What's your preferred document style for writing your drafts?

Important Milestones

It's great to reach a mini-milestone when writing a book is such a huge project. I've broken the latest novel down into four parts as it seemed to make sense.
Last night I finished Part One and now just need to give it a quick edit before moving on. I'm pleased to have hit 20K [the same amount of words I previously deleted, too]. Hopefully, if all four parts are 20K words long I'll be on track for a reasonable length novel and can now claim to be a quarter of the way through.

• Do you know how long your novel's going to be, before you finish?
• Can you see milestones along the way that help to spur you on?
  

Train ride

700 words between Hassocks and Victoria this morning. Conscious that my tippy tapping was keeping the other travellers awake but thankfully no-one complained. Hoping to match that on the way home this evening to make a total of 1,500 for the day. I'm pleased with the mix of styles in the book - a journal, letters and a first person narrator. I only hope that the readers aren't confused.

Not counting any chickens...

Yay! 10K. Finally, made it back up to 10,000-words after abandoning my previous draft. I'm not counting any chickens but it seems to be flowing far better than the previous version. I still have plenty to write about in this section of the book (should account for 1/4 of the book) and I'm hoping it'll get to 20,000-words. There's still plenty of the lead characters' backgrounds to fill in. I'm a bit stuck at the moment and need to start the next part before I turn in for the night. I've written over 3K words, today so on target for my end of March deadline. Have twitchy fingers and am dying to go back and do a rough edit but I'm scared that I'll end up dumping what I've written this time. Better to keep going frwards, I think. Perhaps, I'll allow myself and edit when I finish this quarter.

Lucky for some

Had to add a quick post so that there aren't 13 posts on my blog (unlucky for some). Actually, I am feeling lucky today. Definitely made the right decision to restart current novel and today reached 8,000-words so just a couple away from the magic 10K. The story seems to be flowing much better now and the characters seem more real, to me at least. I'm in less of a hurry to reach the finish post and resigned to the fact that developing the characters is as important as the later part of the plot where the real action will occur.

• Anyone else got any thoughts on how to develop characters through descriptions/their actions and how to introduce significant events from their past as well as their present?