Day 3

1,185 words.

My main character has a plan, but I only know the first and last parts of it. I've got another day or two of writing and then I'm going to have to come up with the rest of it. Don't you love it when your characters know more than you do?

Still, I'm pleased. Today's word count only took me about an hour to write. I use speech-to-text, so that's a little less impressive than it sounds, but even compared to my normal pace, it's fast. The downside to this speed is that I already know this draft is going to be way too short, and subsequent drafts are going to need to be expanded rather than pared down. Is that better or worse? I don't know!

What I do know is that it's probably going to be a common problem for me. I'm used to writing short stories, making my writing concise and stripping away unnecessary words. It's always been an effort to describe instead of summarize, let moments breathe instead of getting right to the point. But since this is the first draft, my priority can't be descriptions or pacing. Right now I just need to get the big picture, bare bones structure down. Once this draft is finished I'll go back to revising my practice novel, and then I'll really get to practice adding in descriptions and tweaking pacing; making sure the story doesn't feel stuffed and that every part of it has a chance to breathe.