Looking at this graph, and seeing the overall progress, and more importantly comparing it to last year's effort and the entry previous to that, I'm surprised (and a tad worried) by how well this is going. First, last years graph. I had trouble keeping up obviously. This was the novel regarding the murder mystery that I ran into while touring a refinery (see more here).
The year before that, where I kept up quite well, I wrote like a fiend! This was the moment when I wrote the rough draft of the novel I'm currently revising called Vapor Trail. The problem . . . I'm re-writing that novel right now with my critique group, and I would guess that 75% of what I wrote will not be re-written but instead will just be trashed. I blame the lack of an outline.
So how will this year's effort flesh out? Next year will I see it as I see 2012's entry? As a compendium of nonsense and a waste of a month's writing? Or like Vapor Trail, a grain of a good idea but a lot that needs to be redone.
I believe that this year's work is far more polished than the previous entries. I think not having to worry about where the story and the plot are going (or coming from), by doing just a bit of outlining and planning, I've allowed the story to stay on track naturally, the story has taken far fewer blind alleys, and I think by having that road map it has allowed me to focus on the writing just that wee bit more, and hopefully that will pay off in the re-writing.
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