I’ve been working on Book 3 about a month. I’ve written 48,336 words. While I’d planned for 75k, I’m going to change the plan. It isn’t because there are 11 days until NaNoWriMo – or that isn’t the only reason.

The main reason I’m changing the plan is I changed the way I wrote this novel. I started at the end, which I thought was solid. The problem arose during the draft that I had a question that fit within the novel’s conflict that I hadn’t addressed at the end. It became more and more apparent as I continued writing.

Then I stopped writing from the back forward. I started at the beginning and wrote toward where I left off. This was both a blessing and a curse. The question that had been hovering around the narrative took over. Because I started at the end, I lost the feeling of where I was within the book. I feel like there are holes that I haven’t filled in yet. I know my end has changed, because jumping around the way I did brought different pieces to light that needed to be resolved in a little bit different way.

I learned a lot from this experiment. It doesn’t matter how many novels you write – each one teaches you something. My method of discovery works better with an outline, which I have had for each of these novels. I write better when I take a mostly-forward direction from the beginning to the end. I have this picture in my head that changes as I progress through my story world, and the holes become apparent as I near the end, then I skip around again and write the scenes that plug the holes. By the time I reach the end, I generally have to cut off the beginning to find where my story truly starts. But writing that false beginning also gets me within the world and it is real to me.

I wouldn’t know all of this if I hadn’t written so many drafts. I know that I need to print these things off to read them and start editing. If I try to do that digitally, I don’t get anywhere. Next month I’m excited to start a new project.

So my revised goal for the next 11 days is to put the novel in chronological order as it stands, read through it, write the revised ending that finishes the conflict that decided it was going to be the focus of the narrative, and to make notes about where I think the holes are to start editing in December. It’s respectable to say I wrote 113k toward two YA novels in 66 writing days.