The weakest point in my NaNo was the outline, as I’ve mentioned before.  So this weekend I signed up for a word count marathon on Forward Motion that allows me to count both novel words and world building, unlike NaNo.  I did get a decent jump on my novel, not the 50k I was hoping for, but more than the minimum for sure.

So, Coma Wedding now stands at 44,301 words.  The first act is coming to a close, this piece which sets up the rest of the novel and so is the largest.  It’s an odd case because though this is a paranormal, time travel novel, there has been almost nothing to distinguish this from a contemporary…okay, one set in 1977.  Is it working?  I don’t know.  But the characters seem likable and their stresses are stressy.  We’ll see what it comes out to be in the end, but for the time being, my job is just to write.

The outline has reached almost 17,000 words and takes my characters up to the final step.  I could have written the actual ending today (in the outline at least) but my outline is estimated at 86k already.  The notes I have in the synopsis add a last little twist in that I think is interesting, but at the same time will add word count, though I don’t know how much.  I haven’t decided whether to leave it in or cut it out, so I didn’t put in the final scenes.  I think 86k is enough to get me through NaNo and beyond, so I can make that call when I’m a bit closer to it :).

My current statistics are:

66 scenes
34 complete – 52% of the novel
32 Scenes remain
41695 Remaining word count
85996 Estimated length – with an average of 1303 words per scene.
44301 Current Total

Note that my average words per scene has dropped.  I had a couple scenes come in at 800 rather than 1,400 words.  On the other hand, I still haven’t reached the ones I think will run long, so the estimate is a fluid number right now.  Thank goodness for the autocalculator on my spreadsheet :).