Marathon and Ransome’s Crossing Updates

I would have posted this earlier, but I had to type in what I hand-wrote yesterday so I’d have an accurate word count to report. While the volume is nowhere near what it needs to be to get this manuscript finished in the next few weeks, I’m already off to a better start than what I’ve been doing for the past few months. So here are my word count results for the first four days of the month-long writing marathon challenge I’m doing with my local writing group:

October 1: 552 words
October 2: 1,609 words
October 3: 731 words
October 4: 636 words
Four-day total: 3,528 words

I really need to be averaging between 3,000 and 4,000 words a day. But I also needed to get back into my story. And now that I’ve got everyone aboard their respective ships, even though I’m occasionally having to stop writing and pull out a research book just to make sure I’m not too far off the mark when I have one of them do something (it helps that I’m using this book as my “lap desk” for sitting in the bed writing by hand), I’m making headway with the story. I was tickled with the scene I wrote last night—Charlotte’s first day on her ship when she’s confronted by the bully of the midshipmen. It was one of those times when I felt like I was just recording something that was really happening—the whole scene was so clear in my head.

Something that’s been a little harder for me in writing this book is the fact that for the first time I have a couple from a previous book returning as POV characters after they’re married. As in, beginning the day after their wedding. So I’m having to figure them out as they’re having to figure each other out. It hasn’t been easy, and I have a feeling that once I get through to the end of this manuscript, there’s going to be plenty of revision needed (right now there’s a lot of “inside the POV character’s head” stuff going on in the first eleven chapters). There were a lot of things I needed to know about the characters which may or may not stay in after I finish the book and really know who they are, especially with Charlotte and Ned. Even though Charlotte was a POV character in Ransome’s Honor, she was still more of a secondary character. Crossing, however, puts her front-and-center, so I had to take some time to get to know her better. And of course, Ned is our new POV character in Crossing and even though I’d worked out a lot of his backstory before I began writing, as with any new character, there has to be a “get to know you” phase once the writing starts. It’s one thing to know what a character’s backstory is; it’s something totally different to get inside his head and find out what his goals and motivations are.

I was hoping to be able to sit out on the porch to write this afternoon, but as it’s not even 60 degrees yet (at 12:30) and still threatening rain, I guess I’ll have to settle for the recliner in the living room with the laptop.

I posed the question last Thursday about what you could make a daily practice for the 31 days in October to get something accomplished or create a new (good) habit—writing, housekeeping, journaling, reading the Bible, exercising, etc. Have you figured out what your “marathon challenge” is for October? Have you started yet?