PerNoFiMo update

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a Writing Wednesday post that instead of doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I wanted to do PerNoFiMo (Personal Novel Finishing Month). I’ve got three unfinished projects on my computer that I really need to get done, one of which was as far along at 40,000 words.  That’s a lot of novel to have written and then left unfinished.

So on Monday, I pulled out that 40,000 words and started adding to it.  It was a little rough at first.  I had wanted to get started on Sunday by re-reading what I had written so far, but Princess came down with the flu and I wasn’t feeling so hot myself, so nothing got done that day.  I plowed into it on Monday instead, adding about 1500 words, and then spent Tuesday and Wednesday reacquainting myself with my notes and rough outline.  I’ve got a ton of notes still left to sort through, but I got myself far enough along to know the general direction I need to head in, and on Wednesday night I started writing again.

Last night, Thursday, I made the mistake of checking e-mail before doing any writing, and spent an entire 2 hours responding to a very important e-mail, thus failing to get more than another 10 words written in the novel.  So I cleared everything off my plate today and sat down at noon to start writing again.  I got through another 3000 words, bringing me to a total of 6000 so far for the week. I’m hoping I can squeeze in another 2000 before I go to bed on Sunday night.  We’ll see.

Some interesting things I’ve discovered so far this week.  I had planned to work on this novel during the day, but I’ve had to spend so much time dealing with the usual e-mail and day-to-day promo and supporting work I do as a writer that I can never manage to do any actual writing.  So, I decided I would have to stay up a little later and write after the girls go to bed.  It’s actually kind of nice. I climb into bed with my laptop, and just type.  It’s very cozy and I can actually get 1000 words done pretty easily this way.

The other thing I’ve discovered, or rather knew but am now actually experiencing first hand,  is that I don’t need write perfectly to get this done.  If I try to write the perfect story, I will fuck myself over completely and not get anything down on the page.  Instead, I just need to type anything, and I do mean anything, that comes to mind.  I’ve said this before, the point of NaNoWriMo, and now PerNoFiMo, is to get as many words down on the page as possible.  Not the best words, not the exact perfect words, just as many as you can in order to rip through the first draft of the novel.  I’ve had to constantly remind myself of this every time I hesitate and think, “Eh, did I really mean to type that?  It doesn’t sound exactly right.”  It doesn’t matter if what I typed is exactly right.  What matters is I typed it and now I need to move on and type other things.

Hopefully, I’ll do another update on PerNoFiMo next Wednesday as part of Writing Wednesday.  My goal is to get at least another 20,000 words added to this story by the end of the month, though I would prefer to write as much as 40,000 and maybe get this story done.  But any progress at this point is good progress, and right now I’m already 6000 words ahead of the game.

Write on, dudes!