I haven’t posted an update about my NaNoWriMo novel since I started writing it in November, aside from a small mention in my Plans for the New Year post, so here it is:

I “won” NaNoWriMo because I was able to write 50,000 words before November 30, but I wasn’t able to finish my novel.  I realized around the middle of November that my story was much bigger than 50K words.

Despite wanting to finish the novel, I stopped working on it in December, just because I needed a bit of a break from so much writing.

For about two weeks, I’ve been writing on it again for about an hour each day.  That seems to be a good amount of writing for me.  During NaNo, I was writing about 2.5 hours each day.  That was fun while it lasted, but that’s much more than I want to devote to it now.  I’m not pounding out the words as a result, but at least I’m writing again.

My goal now is to be done writing the first draft before April 1.  Not only do I have a offer to get a free paperback book printed by CreateSpace that expires in April, but I’m also pregnant with our second child, who is due in April.  Once this new baby comes along I just know I’m not going to have any time to write.  Any free time I have will likely be trying to get some sleep. 

My goal should be attainable.  I just took a recent look at my outline of major scenes and decided to estimate how many words each scene is going to take to finish.  It looks like I still need to write around another 25K words.  That’s not counting the minor scenes that go between each of the major ones, but even if I double my estimate to 50K, I should be able to finish even if I only write 720 words every day between now and March 31.  That word count is something I can definitely do, since I’m averaging over 1000 words a day as it is.

As far as the actual story, it’s obviously going to need a bunch of editing when I’m done, but overall I really like where the novel is going.  It’s basically the same story I started out with, but I’ve added a few unexpected subplots that help flesh out the supporting characters and help to mirror the theme of the main plot.  To be more specific than I was in my first post, it’s about a struggling artist, Ashley (Walsh) Haal, who is stuck in a bad marriage to her lawyer husband, Scott.  She has poor self-esteem that hurts her in both her marriage and her career as a painter.  Because of her best friend, Katee Hess, she ends up meeting an acclaimed photographer, Jacob Kanemura, and Ashley and Jacob become quick friends.  Jacob allows Ashley to see herself, and her paintings, in a new light and he begins to repair the damage to her ego that Scott has created over the years.  She also gets up the courage to have a gallery showing of her art.  Ashley and Jacob fall in love and they begin to have an affair, Jacob not knowing that she is married.  Meanwhile, because of Ashley’s new found self-esteem and courage, Scott has come to see that he has been a jerk, and tries to mend his marriage with Ashley.  Now Ashley is torn between Scott and Jacob.  She doesn’t know what to do.  Go back to Scott who is trying to be a better husband or stay with Jacob?  But after the affair comes to light, will she have a choice?  I also plan on throwing a pregnancy in the mix to further mess with Ashley’s head.  I think I want to make it Jacob’s baby, but I may have it be a toss up as to who’s child it is.  I’m also pretty sure that I want to have a bittersweet ending, with her going back to Scott at the end, but who knows at this point.  I still have a lot to write before I make that decision.

I don’t know what I plan to do with it once it’s done.  I want to get it bound, and I figure I’ll edit it when I find the time, but as far as who I’ll let read it, I’m not yet sure.  It may just be something I have sit on the shelf for the rest of my life. Who knows at this point.  At the very least I will have written a novel by the time I’m done.  That’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was about 10 years old.

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