The first draft of Cat’s Paw is finished! It took 27 days to write. I find that to be quite amazing.

The only other time I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo I did the full strength version and ended up with 53,000 words of complete rubbish (the whole manuscript needs to be rewritten from the start)…and I burned out. I couldn’t write for six months afterwards. That’s the reason I refused to do it again.

This time, doing Mini-NaNo, allowed me to take my time getting the words down. Even though I didn’t edit as I wrote, which is something I normally would do, the manuscript is a good first draft. There is one section that needs some research in order to improve what I’ve written and to make it more realistic. And the main confrontation needs going over with a fine tooth comb. It’s a bit weak how it is now, but most of my big confrontations are weak to start with. I find them difficult to write. Oh, I almost forgot, a surprise character entered the story near the end and was given a special name - Nameless - so I guess I’ll have to come up with something better for him too.

I’ve made copies of this first version of Cat’s Paw and will now officially set the manuscript aside until 2007. I can’t believe I won’t have a word count to achieve tomorrow. Actually, I’m please to be able to do something else for a few days.

Some statistics:
No. of days I didn’t write during Mini-NaNo: 2
My lowest daily word count: 320 words
My highest daily word count: 1,803 words

Filed under: Cat's Paw, My Writing: