It is a momentous morning, I just crossed the 50,000 word mark, 50,072 to be exact. I wrote a little overtime this morning because when I hit 7am, which is when I usually finish, I was sitting around 49,300 and I was so close that I just kept writing for a few more minutes. So, I may be a little late to work, or at least a little late in terms of when I usually get in, but it was worth it to cross the finish line a day early. Tomorrow morning I will wrap up the first draft with an epilogue sort of ending. I don’t have time to finish the book within the month as I would want, so the epilogue will get things summarized and then I’ll expand the ending when I start tackling the second draft.

Well, the hockey players in love have been accidentally outed to their teammates during the last week of writing, and there is family strife for one of them to as their older brother also found out that he has a gay sibling. I’m a little under 1,000 words away from crossing the 40,000 word mark as week 4 gets underway today. There are only 8 days left for me to get to 50,000 words (and since I usually get at least 2,000 words per day done, going over the word count shouldn’t be a problem). What I do worry about is actually having an ending sometime soon.

What I do know is that I’ve enjoyed the writing enough, and enjoy the story enough, that once November is done with the craziness of cranking out words, that I am going to go back and edit the story and see if there is any marketability in it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Well here it is, the middle of the month and at approximately 6:20 this morning, I crossed the 25,000 word mark–half way to the 50,000 word goal for National Novel Writing Month. This 25,000 words translates to 40.5 single spaced pages in MS Word.

I’m quite happy that I have managed to stay on pace so far, even though I had another day this past weekend where I didn’t make the word count (Sunday I only wrote about 500 words).

So far the hockey players in love have snagged a scholarship to play at Michigan; one of them got pretty severely hurt in the middle of a game and they’re on the verge of being discovered by their teammates (I actually thought I’d get that done within the first 25,000 words, but I think it will happen before I cross 30,000).

I have posted a brief excerpt from the novel on the NaNoWriMo website. It’s part of my profile and you can read it by clicking on the part of the page to read the excerpt. Remember, it’s very much a first draft, so you’ll have to excuse any editing problems.

I still don’t have an ending yet… or really have a clue what the end game will be. But I’ve got 15 more days (including a week’s worth of vacation) to figure that part out!

Will and I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a yearly event in which the goal is to produce a 50,000 word (or more) novel during the month of November. I’m taking a couple hours before going to work in the morning to work on the novel, with a daily word goal of at least 1,667 words per day. So far I’ve been doing closer to 2,000 words per day, which is great.

So why does this show up in the hockey blog? I decided the novel focuses on two high school hockey players who end up falling for each other. Where will all this go? I’m not sure yet since I’m writing this on the fly, but they will, of course, end up coming out to their team and to the school and probably have family conflict too… who knows they may even break up by the end (or not, I’m a sucker for a happy ending). I’m typically only thinking a day or two ahead on the plot just to make sure that I’ve got stuff to write so I can actually make the word count. So far, so good… it’s day 4 and I’m on track with the word count.

I’ll update how this is going at about the half way point… wish me luck!