I had a nice thoughtful post mostly written all about this year's NaNoWriMo and lessons learned and all that and, quite frankly, even the idea bores me.In some ways this year went better than last. I certainly felt more prepared. In other ways it was a little more of a struggle. I think I'll go back to gritty hard-core fantasy next year. I also think I'll do more pre-writing so I can hit the ground running even faster.
Including the stuff I wrote before NaNoWriMo, I have somewhere around 80,000 words so far. This means I only have about 20,000 left to finish the story.
At this point in the story, I've adapted everything in Xenophon's account up to the greeks' journey through western Armenia. Next I have to decide how much of their wanderings through the Greek frontier and the political machinations that follow I can squeeze into the space I have left. I also have to figure out how they find out about the aliens' plan (in my adaptation) to attack the now defenseless Earth.
(Yeah, I decided the story needed to end with more of a bang. Xenophon's account just kind of trails off with the break up of the army, it's partial reformation and his hand-off of the troops to the Spartans. I decided to make his little excursion where he captures the rich Persian a little more significant though it will, unfortunately, lose all the humor Xenophon had in his version.)
