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I spent the first half of May completely and miserably stuck on my novel. There was something fundamentally wrong with it, and I couldn’t figure out what that something was. So for the first week of May, I tried to push through and continue writing. The words came slowly, and they were awful. Then, on the suggestion of tinaconnolly I spent several days not writing. This had a much better result, in that I figured out what was wrong with my novel:

It isn’t actually a novel. It is a collection of stories centered around a common theme. …

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10433 / 100000

Total words: 15,530
Total usable words: 10,433

Badges earned (since the last post):

Gold Star – For completing the April Challenge of 12k words in the month of April.

For completely scrapping at least 1,000 words and redoing them.

For mentioning a duck, goose or other waterfowl somewhere in your novel.

For completing a chapter that’s a prime number (Ch. 3)

For writing 500 words and working out for 30 minutes every day for a week.

…

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6444 / 100000

No progress report last week, because I spent a lot of time re-writing Chapter 1 and posting my wordcounter bar with a decreased word count would feel too much like going backwards. I think spending a lot of time on the first chapter was worth it though — the early versions were so far off what I wanted that they likely would have thrown the whole trajectory of the story off. The version I ended up keeping (the 5th version) is far from perfect, but it’s close enough that I feel I can move on. (Yay!)

This …

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3338 / 100000

April 1st – April 5th

Wordcount: 3338

This week’s word count is all on Chapter 1, which I am still tinkering with. The total wordcount is a bit deceptive, because I abandoned a couple partial drafts of Chapter 1, and haven’t counted those towards the total. I’m still working out details about the characters/setting/plot as I go, so I’m okay with the low wordcount. Hopefully things will eventually click into place and I can pick up the pace.

Badges Earned:

For sitting down and cranking out 500 words when I didn’t …

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Someone told me that April 1st was a bad day to start a novel, so I started today instead. I wrote one word :) My goal is to write one chapter a week, for however many chapters it takes for the book to be finished.

I’ve located a progress bar:

1 / 100000

Sadly, my one word is insufficient to show up on the progress meter.

Several other members of Codex are also writing novels at the moment, and as further motivation, I will be trying to earn badges, like the one shown below (unlike this sample, most of …

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