What I Learned In Quarantine

Also known as: How I Wrote A Book In 40 Days

Basically, what I've learned since quarantine started (my store shut down March 15, so I haven't been working for two months now) is that I can in fact write a whole novel in that time.

With the added bonus of Camp Nano in April, I wrote over 100,000 words in 40 days.

The inkling of this idea came to me on March 7, after I watched Midsommar on Amazon Prime and was so thoroughly disturbed that I had to destress with a Disney classic, Tangled. It's probably my favourite Disney movie, and I was thinking about why I haven't written a Rapunzel retelling. People write retellings all the time! Why hadn't I? And at the time, I was also reading Gideon the Ninth, so naturally my mind jumped straight to necromancers.

Of course, I was meant to be working on the second half of The Fallen Star after sending the first half off to betas, but that's another story. This "Rapunzel with necromancers" idea rooted deep in my mind and wouldn't give me peace, so I started talking about it with one of my writing friends. I had a character name within a few minutes, and after a few days, it became a dual-POV novel with a whole plot! I was determined to do this one right, after so many months of rewriting The Fallen Star from scratch, so I opened up Save the Cat and started figuring out the beats.

My writing friend, Sam, helped me through some of the tricky, sticky plot holes, and then on March 19 gifted me with a gorgeous painting SHE DID of the main character in her lighthouse. I cried! I hadn't even started writing it at that point, and she was already so invested. So was I.

I've always been very particular in my writing. I agonize over every word to make sure it sounds right, looks right, feels right. My writing group often compliments my prose (they say it dances, but doesn't read like purple prose, which is high praise indeed) and it doesn't happen by chance. (Okay, maybe it does.) I work to make my sentences flow. And it was slowing me down. They say you can't edit a blank page, but I was so daunted by every next word that my output was suffering.

Then one day I did a few writing sprints live on YouTube with Jessi Elliott, another good writing friend. I was only on chapter 3 at this point, so it was still early in the process, and I was still agonizing over every word. We sprinted for 15, 20, 25 minutes, and my word count wasn't terribly high. Not as high as it could have been. And then something clicked. I stopped caring about the words and just put them on the page. Suddenly my 200 words become 500 become 700. I was writing 1000 words in half the time! That was March 31, and that was my best writing day that month.

April then brought Camp Nano. I wasn't even prepared to do Camp this year. I didn't know where this book was going, if I would even stick with it, but I became so invested in these characters, in this story. The days I did write were consistent: ~1500, ~2000, ~3000 words. The most I had ever written in a single day across any project was around 4000 words (and it wasn't on this project yet). And then I got closer and closer to the midpoint. I had loftier goals I wanted to hit. 30k. 40k. 50k. On April 22, I wrote 7574 words. In 5 days, I wrote over half the entire novel and passed 55k total.

Then I fizzled. I won Camp Nano that week, but I was already burnt out. I didn't have a solid plan for what came after the midpoint, but I knew I had to cover two weeks in the timeline before the final scenes. I had already proven to myself that I could write a lot when I wasn't so focused on the words, and I figured I could finish in just a few more days if I kept at the current pace, but that wasn't sustainable for me. So I gave myself a deadline of May 16. My session target sat around 2300 words. That was reasonable. I can write 2300 words a day no problem.

I finished a week early. Every time I saw I was nearing another target, I pushed myself to hit it. I gave myself the amount of time I thought I needed because I was floundering at this point. I felt like the novel was meandering after the midpoint, and then I put a mountain in the way of the main characters. I easily could have added another 20k to get them around that mountain, to add more scenes that may or may not have been relevant to the plot. But once I started writing them, it didn't work out, as these things never do, and I was suddenly on the last chapter. Then the epilogue. Then I was done. 100,615 words. Draft Zero was done.

Now comes the fun part. I was "fast-drafting" since Chapter 3. Getting the words down to edit later. And I'll admit, even those rough-draft/fast-draft words are...good. They aren't up to my standard, but they are still pretty good, and I pride myself on that. My end target is below 140,000 words. Hopefully I can have an update in a few weeks. I want this thing ready for PitMad in early June. I think it's strong enough. And I've never been so confident in something before (remember how I rewrote The Fallen Star from scratch over 3 times???). This one is a winner.

And if not, at least I have some pretty art. When everything reopens, I'm going to print it on good paper and frame it. Thank you, Sam.