Nova, I don't think that's contrary to the spirit of the exercise. You're supposed to produce 50k words in a month, so you learn you can do it; so you actually complete a project to deadline, so you can encourage and be encouraged. Having 3k of a story already completed doesn't negate any of that, as long as you do the additional 50k on top. At least, that's my opinion.

Thanks, Deena. That's what I think too, so unless I hear some really compelling arguments against it, I think I'm gonna go with it.

Now, if only I could tell my internal editor to shut up and let me write...

Signed,
Guy whose "30 Minute Fics" in LJ are usually less than 500 words long. But flow very nicely.

I call bullshit because to write fifty k cold in a month, you'd have to be wired like Hunter S. Thompson at a Pfizer convention, imo. Whatever it takes, babe. I don't know that I will because the last 6 months have been novel-writing months for me. I've never written 2000 in one day so maybe I've just got size issues. ;)

Here's a writing question: When in a novel(la) should you stop introducing new plot points and start wrapping up the old ones?

Signed,
Should Probably Have Outlined His Novel Before He Started Blindly Typing

Here's a writing question: When in a novel(la) should you stop introducing new plot points and start wrapping up the old ones?

Nov 30th.

I think it goes: new plot points in the middle are "twists," new plot points towards the end are "asspulls."

I think it goes: new plot points in the middle are "twists," new plot points towards the end are "asspulls."

Unless, of course, you've been clever and foreshadowed it all along when the reader wasn't paying attention.

Unless, of course, you've been clever and foreshadowed it all along when the reader wasn't paying attention.

See: J.K. Rowling.

you've been clever and foreshadowed it all along

That happens in the 2nd draft...and sometimes in the galley proofs.

On the ladder front:

Ed doesn't like heights. I love power tools. The gutter on Ed's house is flapping in a pleasant summer sea-breeze. As am I, standing 15 feet up on an adjustable aluminum ladder.

It's sunny and above and behind me jets are screaming around an airshow ten miles off. The grass is short and I have clumsy irrelevant bruises on my knees and I rest my tools on roof shingles with all the casual competence I can muster. Steel screws, longer than my hand, and their plastic casings in my back pocket.

I climb down and we move 8 feet to the left, to the next set of holes.

"We'll need to go back and tighten them all," says Ed.

"I'm glad you're not doing this by yourself," I say.

I climb up the ladder again, lugging the power-driver, chuckling to myself.