October 13th – 887,710

I reached the end of my manuscript rather earlier than I thought I would, the story reaching the point where it was ready for its climax a couple of thousand words sooner than anticipated. As a result I only managed 1,207 words before writing “The End”.

Of course it’s not the end – this particular story has an obvious and much darker sequel and that will hit the starting blocks in due course. In the meantime though, I needed to pick up something else to work on, and for me there was an obvious candidate, although it hadn’t been so obvious earlier in the week. As soon as I’d read through it and made a few minor corrections I scrolled back to the point I’d left it at, and started writing. Less than 90 minutes later I’d added 3,399 words to that story alone, giving me a total of 4,606 for the day.

To switch from a definite male point of view in a very male dominated storyline, to a female point of view in an intense relationship story which currently only involves two main characters wasn’t an easy switch to make, and it should have taken longer. The fact that it didn’t made me go back and reread my work in progress again just to make sure I hadn’t retained the verbal mannerisms and style (i.e. the voice) from the first manuscript. Luckily for me I hadn’t, although I did correct a couple of obvious errors on the way.

This appears to be another milestone along the way to this challenge and it confirms the step change I made in the middle of September was a valid increase in writing output – and not just the single manuscript driving me along. Whoop-i-do as you might say.