NaNoWriMo, Writathon, and Murder in Heliopolis

As you may have seen from previous posts, I am currently participating in NaNoWriMo (unofficially) as well as the Royal Road Writathon. Since the two challenges, which are slightly different and run for different lengths of time, overlap, I've decided to write the same book for them both, and that book is my solarpunk murder mystery, Murder in Heliopolis. 

You can read more about Murder in Heliopolis and find links to the chapters (there are 15 as of my writing this) if you'd like to read the story itself. My goal is to not only reach the 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo by the end of November, but to also reach the 55,555 word goal for Writathon by the end of its fifth week (Dec. 5). What I'd love to do, though, is to complete the entire book by the end of the Writathon's five-week duration, and I've been working very hard to make sure that I meet my goals.

Today is November 15th, which means it's the halfway point of both challenges, more or less. I've passed the 25,000 word mark with my book, and currently have 35,509 words published for Murder in Heliopolis. In other words, I'm 71% done with the NaNoWriMo word count, and 63% done with the RR Writathon word count. 

What has helped me stay productive and push forward has been making flashcards for my books and their plots. Especially with a murder mystery (or any other kind of mystery you might be thinking of writing), it's very important to keep track of all of the clues and details, when they will be revealed in the book, and what the impact of those details being revealed is on the plot and the characters involved. Making flashcards has helped me do that and more, and I've felt very motivated as a result to push forward and write as much as I can for this book. 

I'm also really enjoying the worldbuilding aspect of Murder in Heliopolis. Earlier on in the challenge, when I started writing the story, I told myself that it would be easier for me to hit my word count goals if I could take my time with the worldbuilding and setting descriptions. Since it was a world that I was very much looking forward to getting down on paper (solarpunk aesthetics are visually delicious), I realized that worldbuilding might actually account for a lot of my word count.

As it turned out, however, as the story picks up speed and we find ourselves plunged into the immersive mystery of who killed Cassia Grove, I feel sometimes that I have less space to go on and describe the environment and settings in detail. I hope to go back and do that in later edits or revisions of the book, but I'm happy with what I've got so far, and I hope that readers enjoy it, too. 

I think my first chapter stands as one of the strongest chapters in the book, but I'm enjoying where my current chapters are headed, now that Detective Laith is finally getting some pretty big breakthroughs.

That's really all I have for this writing update. This experience has so far been very fun for me, despite requiring a lot of work and daily effort to keep pushing forward through the story, even if I don't particularly feel like it. I like the sense of discipline that comes with that, and I especially like that now that I've seen that I can do it, it will hopefully translate into more consistent writing routines for future projects.

Once I've completed the NaNoWriMo challenge and the RR Writathon challenge, I expect to move on to Marie/Elise (my other murder mystery) again for the rest of 2021 and get that book revised, edited, and proofread. I'd like to have that book finalized and more or less ready for beta readers and publication in 2022. Looking forward to it!