I suppose the good news is that I won NaNoWriMo.  Yay!  The bad news is that this, along with stuff I did before, takes me to around 80,000 words, and given the length of the chapters I reckon this draft will come in around 160,000 – 180,000 words.
For the most part this has been the most fun I’ve had writing a novel.  There were a couple of chapters a week or so ago where I felt a bit unsure of what I was doing and whether this was actually any good, but those times come during the course of a draft – with me I think it’s when one act moves into the next.  But even though it sometimes took all day to get the word count out, I got the words done and have moved back into easier writing.
The other strange thing that happens when I am this deep into a draft is that I become a little detached from the real world.  I went downstairs to talk to a housemate the other night and ended up standing in front of the TV watching it for 30 minutes.  The closest thing that comes to it is when you have a fever and you feel like you are viewing the world with another pair of eyes.  I feel tired and half my brain is still stuck in the story thinking of what I’m going to write next.
But, this too shall pass.  It’s all part and parcel of writing a novel and the important things are that A) it’s going really smoothly and B) I’m having fun.  I’m still refining processes as it’s a little difficult to stop and plan and keep the momentum going.  I just hope that all my novels going forward are as pleasant as this.  It’s taken a long while to get this calm about writing a novel and actually enjoy the process rather than just the result.
I already see things wrong with this draft that will change in the next.  Mostly it’s worldbuilding type stuff, like I’m not sure whether this world has newspapers or not, and the fact that there’s a placeholder religion in there for now.  But there’s also some language stuff.  There’s a very strong voice to this book and sometimes it gets lost and devolves into ‘yeahs’ and ‘alrights’.  This can all be fixed in the next draft so I allow myself to notice it and then tell myself to carry on writing.
So blogging will probably be minimal up until Xmas, but rest assured that it’s because I’m really busy working.