NaNoWriMo 2020 – The Final Stretch

Posted on November 25, 2020 by benjaminfrog

We’re into the final week now, and as I hit the 40,000 word mark I’m at the last 20% of the book to go. It seems to have been paced well, since there’s only the final battle and the lead in to go yet. And action scenes definitely seem to get written faster (maybe because I’m more excited) so even if the project goes over the 50,000 word count required for NaNoWriMo, I’ll probably still have time to finish the story off.

I’ve also finally started editing, and got the first two chapters done yesterday. Part of that involved doing some research to make sure I’ve got my info right, a lot of that having to do with Mongolia, where I’ve decided to set this story. There were a number of reasons why Mongolia ended up being the sweet spot, some of which would be spoilers, but one reason is that I needed a place that was close to both Russia and China, and because I’m bad at geography I didn’t know at the time if there was such a place. Then I looked at the world map and, lo and behold, Mongolia is sandwiched between those two specific countries. It was actually hilarious how perfect it was.

But if there’s one thing I was not particularly knowledgeable on, it was Mongolian geography. Finding the right spots that had naturally occurring supplies of certain resources, while being relatively close to Russia and China, and also being within reasonable driving distance of each other, took a bit of figuring out. Now I’ve almost got the spots memorized in my head. Since the post-apocalyptic premise is presuming a partially land-altering catastrophe in a non-specified point in the near-ish future, I have provided myself some liberties as far as changing the landscape, and I think I did that a bit with Vampires Vs. Dragons, but the closer I can keep to real-world locations and info on those locations, the better. It adds a sense of realism and emersion to the story. By now I’ve played so many different video games set in New York that I’ve come to memorize some of the places, even though I’ve never been there in real life. I appreciate that attention to detail, and tried looking up likely places to be able to find certain resources in the Mongolian territories and nearby regions, and may have ended up on a watch list as a result. (A common occurrence for writers.)

How’s your NaNo project going? Are you ready for the final stretch?

~ Ben