My NaNoWriMo efforts are off to a great start, especially considering that I started fast-drafting the last week of October.

From a 4,000 word head-start, I finished the first draft of the first of what I hope will be three novellas fast-drafted between the end of October and the beginning of December.

Once again, I’m using all of the tricks possible from my How to Write a Novel In a Month post, just on three connected novellas instead of one novel (hence NaNovellaWriMo). These novellas are all in a series, part of a grand design I hope to be able to talk about shortly. It’s a fun challenge to be writing at a shorter length, but not stand-alone stories, instead using smaller chunks of story that are connected.

Thankfully, I’ve already been working on episodic writing with comics work, and I’ve got a solid overall plan for this project. I finished the rough draft of the first novella last Friday, and started work on the second, which will probably be a tad longer.

My daily wordcount goal is 2500 words, which usually breaks down to two chunks of 1250 words, which I can often hit in about an hour of drafting, barring major distractions. I’m giving myself a break on the wordcount goals for WFC, since I’ll be otherwise occupied, though I’m hoping to get some writing in over the weekend regardless.

Something else I’m doing this time is what I’m calling Development Diaries – short notes each day about how the writing went that day – challenges, things that worked and didn’t work, the ways that daily life impacted my productivity, and so on. It’s a good way to capture the day-to-day experiences of writing, and I hope it will be interesting to readers when I get to share the diaries later on.

But for now, back to writing!