The Effects of Sprints

So this year for National Novel Writing Month, I am way over my word count especially for this just being the third day, and that mostly has to do with all the sprints I've been doing over at the Facebook NaNoWriMo page. I can't stress enough how amazing those are to just let go of any lingering trace of your inner editor and just let the words come to you. There's time for editing later and as both my editors will tell you, there have been a lot of editing needed on both of my published NaNo novels because I did just this. Admittedly, I should have done a better job editing myself the first time around, but they were great sports about it.

I've also met a bunch of great people over there. I'm not usually the most social guy, and in fact I'm a bit of a hermit and that sort of hurts my sales because I'm not the type to put myself out there, but this month I've been more involved with the word sprints and the discussions over there than I ever have been before. It shows in my word count, too, considering I'm almost halfway to 50k and it's only the third day. Sprinting is a brilliant thing if you're hung up on editing yourself or you just think you're not cut out for this. Just shut your editor off and write for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes. However long the sprint is, you just write. It's an amazingly liberating experience.

This story has taken me on a rollercoaster and I'm not quite sure where it's going to end, but this set of characters does that to me. Kay and his friends have always told me to expect the unexpected-- hell, this story had me merging an entire other world from one of my other novels with this one to expand the amount of characters exponentially-- and that's what I love more than anything about it. I'm excited to introduce this other cast of characters, and that's my next step.

I look forward to what else they pull out of their hats for me to write. Now, I'm back to writing. Happy noveling!