NaNoWriMo 2013 - The End?

I won NaNoWriMo again this year. That makes six for six. However, what I did not do was finish the story I was writing. I crossed 50,000 words on November 30th, ending at 53,213 (Scrivener says 53,275), but I still have three scenes to write and one to rewrite from the ground up.

I had a vague outline that got me through several chapters, but it didn't get me through the whole story. A lot of talking with a good friend of mine helped to set what I needed to write for the story to make more sense. This was not just once, but several times throughout the month. It did make for a better story, and when I finish the scenes I mentioned above, it should be nicely set up for another sequel. I have no idea when I'm going to write that one, though. Maybe next NaNo, maybe sooner than that. I suppose it's possible I sit on it for a few years as I did with the 2010 story that led to this one, though I would rather not.

In years past, I kept much of the writing I did even though it didn't fit with the story. The earliest instance of this was in 2008 when I had a scene of the BBG robbing a liquor store, shown on TV. I never did anything with it and should have cut it, but it's still there. This year I would replace and edit as I went along. The most extreme case of this was where I had one character, and then rewrote the chapter to have two characters together. That cost me quite a few words, but it was worth it for the story.

Here's my word graph for the month:

The graph shows I was behind from the start, caught up on day 5 and then didn't write for two days. Believe it or not, day 8 has more words than day 7, though only by 178. I caught up again on day 13 and held it until day 22, though I wrote below the 1,666 words-per-day pace from the 21st until the 27th. During that time there was much discussion and outline revision. In my favor, I wrote on every day of the month except for the two days I took off (the 7th and 8th).

I wrote a strong 3,626 words on the 28th, only 609 on Thanksgiving Day, which was a busy day for me, and then 5,529 and 4,364 on the 29th and 30th respectively, winning on the last day.

The 2010 book suffered from a lack of focus on point of view (POV), and I could tell this one is going to have some of the same issues, though it is better.

I tried not to use adverbs, instead finding another way to say what I was trying to say. I think I failed in this, because I still used 165 different adverbs, and they counted for 514 of my words (almost 1%). I also tried not to use "was" or "is" too much, but it still appeared 768 times for "was" ("it was"+"he was"+"she was" = 259 of them) and 192 for "is."

I also tried not to use "thought" words. This is from writing advice from Chuck Palahniuk. The specific ones mentioned are thinks (30), knows (109), understands (18), realizes (6), believes (19), wants (59), remembers (6), imagines (2), desires (0). This is obviously not an all-inclusive list. The numbers after each are how many times I used that one, for a total of 249 times, though many of those were in dialogue.

My intention now is to write or rewrite the other scenes by December 5th, when the CreateSpace offer is supposed to appear, then to print a draft of the book as I usually do. It still needs a cover. I also want to buy Scrivener, which is half price for NaNo winners, as soon as I can work it into my budget.