National Novel Writing Month 2025 – Writing Log
The Writing Log – The Novel
Friday, October 31 – 0 words (+0)—Yes! Let’s do this again!
The kids are trick-or-treating. The weather is cold and rainy. I have mulched everything that could be mulched outside the house. The leaves have fallen. There are weeks to go before there’s a lasting snow cover. As the song goes, we’re now in the season of the sticks.
But I don’t feel depressed or forlorn. I’m jittery, eager, purposeful. I’m about to write an entire novel in thirty days. This isn’t the first time I have attempted this: I did it every year from 2001 to 2010, and then again from 2022 to 2024 (well, okay, I did the 2024 one in January-February 2025 but I still say that counts. Or, seen another way, I’m about to write a second novel within a year.) I know from experience that it can be done, and I’m feeling reasonably excited about this year’s premise (“A haunted house story set during a single night in the White House”). I’ve spent the last six months plotting (with a 3,000-word outline to show for it), refining characters, taking in the news and coming up with a pretty good synopsis. During the last few weeks, I cleared up my schedule to focus on thirty days of novel-writing.
This doesn’t mean I’m overconfident. There are many ways in which this could go wrong. Other than the usual plague, famine and pestilence, the day-job is far more demanding these days than in previous years. I’m not planning on travelling, but I do have a day-trip to Montréal later this month. I may try to complete another book project before American Thanksgiving. My last novel went more slowly than usual because I fell into the classic trap of taking a dumb story seriously enough to care about the plotting, characters and writing. I’m also, as usual, trying a few more ambitious things. For instance, this year’s novel is straight-up horror (how appropriate for a thirteenth novel!), which is a genre I have occasionally approached in the past, but never at novel length. The vast majority of the story takes place in the span of twelve hours, which doesn’t give a lot of wiggle room for time-skips and loose plotting. I don’t plan on big action sequences nor any of my usual SF/action thrills. I do want to spend more time with the characters, aiming for depth rather than breadth. I’m still not sure how much humour is going to make it into this novel’s narration. And while my outline is satisfyingly detailed for the opening chapters of the novel and the conclusion I’m aiming for, it’s uncomfortably sparse in the middle portion of the novel.
Still, I’m optimistic. Part of the fun of novel-writing is discovering those parts in-between the set-pieces and coming up with new ones. I write sequentially because every past scene informs the current one. The single best chapter of my previous novel came from a single line in my outline. I have a knack for littering my opening chapters with potential ideas and conflicts that can be used later on. (Heck, in the middle section of my previous novel, I threw in an additional conspiracy I wasn’t planning on simply by tying up elements that already existed in the text as written.) The price to pay may be a few more minutes of staring into space while wondering, “What next?” Or maybe I’ll take a day off to plot rather than write. But that’s the fun of it.
One last note about the National Novel Writing Month itself—if you’ve been paying attention, you should know that NaNoWriMo (as a formal thing, as an organization, as a web site) is dead—and good riddance: a deviation away from its original objectives, overambitious goals, bad management, and self-inflicted stupidity all led nanowrimo.org to its deserved end. But I don’t care about the labels: November, for me, remains the (Inter)National Novel Writing Month. (I tried warming up to Personal Writing Month—PerWriMo—, Novel November—NovNov—, Canadian Novel Writing Month—CaNoWriMo, which I rather like—but nothing stuck.) The season is right, I’ve been looking forward to this for months and now it’s time to commit. Onward.
Saturday, Nov. 1st – 6,848 words (+6,848)—What a great start!
I don’t always have the luxury of starting a novel on a Saturday, so I made the most out of it: I stayed home, did an early writing sprint early in the afternoon (writing the entire prologue) then another in the evening, writing nearly half of Chapter One. I finished on a cliffhanger (as I often do for fun). I was rusty but not that rusty, and the advantage of having plotted and outlined the first chapters over the past few months is that I had a really good idea of what to do during this first day. But even then, surprises are creeping in—one of my characters already surprised me by being more of a schemer than I anticipated, so I’m going to roll with it.
I’m not making any grandiose claims about the quality of the prose—but I find myself going back more often and fixing a few words just to get the right flow. Amusingly enough, I’m anticipating a novel around 60,000 words (horror is best in moderation), which means that I may have already written a tenth of it today. We’ll see. I do anticipate one change for the serial readers already—the prologue is meant to be broken apart, with its snippets inserted in-between the sections of the novel. But readers following along will take it all in at once. We’ll see how that plays, if they know too much already.
Sunday, Nov. 2 – 11,155 words (+4,307)—Not a bad second day
Today was not like yesterday: in an inversion of my usual weekend, this was a Sunday to go out, visit family, get some groceries, host a visitor and make a lasagna (which turned out pretty well, considering that it was my first-ever lasagna-from-scratch). As a result, I came to the novel fairly late in the evening and started by revising existing text. But once I got into it, things went really well—more than four thousand words in three hours, including adding a bit more punch to a scene written yesterday. I’m nearly done with the initial tour of our viewpoint characters, and I like how the act of writing is making them come into focus, as well as defining the other characters surrounding them. While the horror component of the novel hasn’t really begun yet, I’m dropping enough hints of doom along the way that readers shouldn’t feel short-changed. The initial exposition should end tomorrow, after which the action will become slightly more insistent—although the real horror should begin midweek. Eleven thousand words right out of the gate is not bad—that pacing won’t last, but at least I’ve got that done already.
Monday, Nov. 3 – 14,118 words (+2,963)—Back to a normal pace
My overall objective for the month is 3,000 words per day, so today was a far more normal day than the last two. Then there’s the fact that we’re out of Chapter One’s exposition, and the real work of moment-to-moment plotting begins—it takes a little bit more time figuring out where to go next and how to get there. Nonetheless, and for a workday, this is pretty good. Our main characters are introduced, they’re all converging toward the White House, and we’re this close to beginning the intense locked-room twelve-hour period during which most of the novel takes place. I should be done with Chapter 2 tomorrow, and then things get interesting.
Tuesday, Nov. 4 – 15,682 words (+1,564)—Eh, not good
Disappointing tally tonight—Although, to be fair, I had to attend a non-profit board meeting that dragged for twice as long as usual, and that seriously cut into my writing time. I could go on for another hour, but I choose sleep: Big day at work tomorrow and I won’t be any good either during the day or after work if I don’t get enough rest. I was still able to write a solid exposition scene laying down the foundations of what’s going to happen next, throw in a few character moments, and while I couldn’t end on a cliffhanger, at least it’s a solid line of dialogue. Chapter 2 continues tomorrow, as our characters should all be inside the White House by the end of the writing session.
Wednesday, Nov. 5 – 17,613 words (+1,931)—Better, but not where I want to be
Overall, things are not going badly—I still managed near two thousand words despite not having all of my time to myself this evening, and struggling a bit with the usual “How do I arrange my narrative in the best way to get to my next high point?” head-scratching. At least I completed three scenes and got a bit further to the end of Chapter 2. I also did some necessary research today, which does not count as writing, but still goes against the making of the novel. I read about White House history some more, revisited the 360-degree virtual online exhibit that allows you to tour the public areas of the White House, and poked around pictures and explanations about the building. I’m clearly not meeting my daily objective of 3,000 words, but at least I’m making progress. One funny thing: About a week ago, to check whether I understood my four main characters well enough, I held a mock “panel discussion” with my characters in which I got them to talk together about various topics (this is not a mental condition—it’s a writing exercise), and one imagined interaction between two of the main characters had me laughing aloud. I liked it so much that I managed to throw it into the text during this evening’s writing session.
Thursday, Nov. 6 – 20,063 words (+2,450 words)—Slow progress in the valley
Every novel has peaks and valleys, and part of the necessary role of valleys is to prepare the terrain for the peaks. I recognize that I’m in the inglorious part of the novel—where I have to set up the pieces required for the next peak to hit even harder. That means exposition, sketching out the environment in which our haunted-house story will take place, and setting up the characters and the tensions between them. (“Stocking up Chekov’s Wall,” as I called it in a previous novel writing log.) At the same time, it’s a balance in not telling so much right away that the rest will feel like repetition. I managed two scenes today—still exposition, but I hope interesting exposition blended with character development and creepy portents. Hence a minor injury to one of our main characters in which blood is spilled (inspired by something that happened to me in a Quebec City hotel, no less) that will pay off in unexpected ways later (ah, the joy with working with supernatural tropes!), the increased weight of an antagonist coming to the fore through increasingly less distant actions, and trying to further portray the apocalyptic context in which this novel is taking place. My pace is not where I hope it would be, but I’m still making excellent progress considering the date and my expected word-count. I’m not sure about the progress I’ll be able to make this weekend: Tomorrow evening looks fine, Saturday looks like a prolonged family outing, and Sunday looks like I’ll be staying home while the season’s first snowstorm will hit. As usual, we’ll see.
Friday, Nov. 7 – 22,168 words (+2,105)—On the difficulty of committing
I suppose it’s a good thing that this novel is supposed to be slower-paced and more introspective/character-driven than previous ones, because I’m having a hard time getting to the action. A lot of this is really just trying to write something good rather than something fast. I know where I’m heading, but it’s trying to find a way maximizing the potential of the story that requires staring off into space for long periods of time before quickly jotting down the next passage. I will have to commit to a course of action soon, but the advantage is that I’m also clarifying the next few plot beats as I advance. (It didn’t help that the day was longer and busier than expected, including attending a used book fair and driving through downtown in the dark, in the rain, and in rush-hour traffic.). There’s a fair amount of research in order to really get a feel for the White House for plotting purposes, and digging ever deeper in the tapestry of supernatural nonsense that had been said about the White House. It’s a good thing it’s Friday, though, because I’m finishing this writing session well after midnight. Oh well; at least it’s two thousand words more on the pile. But I really should get to the conclusion of Act One by the end of this weekend. I’m already several days past my first estimate.
Saturday, Nov. 8 – 22,823 words (+655 words)—Dismal, but promising
If you’re disappointed, so am I—but it wasn’t that bad of a day. Family outing during most of it, meaning a late start. Then fixing a few things that nagged me about previous passages, including adding one more horrific moment in an earlier scene (and thus making it fit better with later events). A lot more research into the White House, including peering at the shelves of the White House Library (did you know that it includes a copy of Bob Dylan’s Lyrics?) and figuring out a purpose for that room in the plot. I could now give you a tour of the Executive Residence, if that ever proved useful. But most of all, I spent at least an hour figuring out the mystery of the missing two hours: In the fairly tight plotting over the novel, I have an event beginning at 7 p.m., whereas the characters were pretty much done doing what they had to do by 5 p.m. It took me a while to figure out how to fill up that period, and the solution was both to pull some events from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. (while making sure the events planned for 9 p.m. stayed put), and create a few more plot beats to fill out the remaining hour. It sounds stupid, but that’s the kind of procrastination that happens when the next few kinks of the plot aren’t fully polished. Now that this is done (I now have a list of the next five scenes to write), tomorrow looks quite a bit better.
Sunday, Nov. 9 – 26,200 words (+3,377 words)—Much better
Everything goes better when you have a plan, and as I mentioned yesterday, I had a much better idea of where I was going today. I’m slowly working my way to the conclusion of the first act, and today was about moving the pieces to where they should be next. I went back and changed one already-written section so that the growing tension was better portrayed, got my last missing character into the White House and prepared the way for tomorrow’s writing session, which should take us either to the next act, or really close to it. One shout-out goes to those who put information about the White House online, making the job of describing the place much easier. This being said, not everything is online about the White House—whenever you’re stepping away from the areas shown during public tours, things get far more speculative and contradictory… and that’s when the novelist’s imagination comes into play. But my goal is to make my portrayal of the White House consistent with known facts—the rest can be more fanciful, and the novel is about to get shoved from realism to… something else… over the next two days.
Monday, Nov. 10 – 30,825 words (+4,625)—A plan, a day off and one of my best days so far
It’s now well past three in the morning of Nov. 11, but the novel is finally past one of its biggest scenes—a definitive genre switch into horror, a pivotal death I’d been plotting for months, the end of its first act and the culmination of the past 5,000 words of scene-setting and pieces-moving. I made the most out of circumstances: While I worked on Monday, this Tuesday is a mandatory holiday for me, so I had the luxury of a very long evening if I wanted to. After napping after supper, I also knew that I wouldn’t go to sleep any time early. So I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Save for the characters realizing it, the novel’s premise is now fully deployed. That was one tall order of writing, but, in the end, I’m happy that I was able to do it all in one extended writing session, pulling back many of my setup threads into a coherent whole. Now the trick is to write some more tomorrow, because we’re now entering the part of the novel that I haven’t planned so much. But, at best, I’m now about halfway done on my way to the anticipated 60,000 words total. At least I get to spend most of my holiday furiously plotting out the next story beats in more detail.
Tuesday, Nov. 11 – 33,333 words (+2,508)—Plotting in the aftermath
The downside of a big satisfying writing session like yesterday is that it’s tougher to pick up the keyboard the next day. You have to rebuild toward the next big plot point. The newly-shuffled situation has to be re-examined, the logistics have to be refreshed and it has to move forward. Adding some memorable moments along the way is strongly recommended. This is complicated by how my outline becomes more tentative at this point of the novel—I know where I’m going, but a lot of the milestones along the way are only sketched in. But that’s when the fun takes place. Taking advantage of my day off work, I spent some of the day sleeping late, some of it wasting time in ways that aren’t easily justifiable when working all evenings on the novel, and some of it daydreaming about the next plot points (which made the wait in line to get myself vaccinated much easier to take in). By the evening, I was able to put together a decent number of words pushing the plot forward and hopefully chilling a few readers along the way. I do feel pretty good about some of the ideas coming up in the next few days—the supernatural nature of the story is really going to ramp up, and without getting spoilery… let’s just say that Abraham Lincoln Human Hunter is a very real possibility. In other, possibly related news, I’m now so fully-briefed on the White House that I can spot mistakes in many of the plans circulating online, I can identify hallucinations in AI-generated texts about the White House, and anticipated the function of a specific room before discovering documentation supporting my guess. None of this is of any help in guessing the true extent of the bunkers under the White House (where the action is likely to move next), but I’ve come across some really fun rumours, and as the quote goes — “When you don’t know the truth, print the rumour!”
Wednesday, Nov. 12 – 35,095 words (+1,762)—Accumulating energy…
Not a particularly good day today, but I’m stopping in large part because it’s getting late, and the next sequence/chapter I’m about to write is supposed to be a centrepiece of the novel: things are going to get really weird for a moment, and I want to be there to write it from beginning to end. What was completed today is a little bit of hand-holding the previous set-piece to the next one, repositioning all of the characters, checking up on how they feel at this point of the story, adding a few gratuitously macabre details, and building tension as to what’s going to happen next. Got a few good character moments out of it, a bit of comic relief, and a few more thematic preoccupations.
Thursday, Nov. 13 – 36,774 words (+1,679)—Not many words, but good words
I shouldn’t be happy about today’s word count, but considering the very tricky swerve that the novel took today, I’m more pleased than you’d expect. This is the day the story got weird, with two new characters that embody different visions of America. Introducing them with the spectacle that they deserved was a challenge, and finding convincing voices for both of them was more fun than expected. I won’t claim complete success (I don’t know whether readers will find it effective or ridiculous), but I’m generally happy at how it turned out so far. Of course, the problem is that I only wrote half a scene—ending on a banger of a line because it’s late and I don’t want to go to sleep too late. I will have to complete the rest of the scene tomorrow. Which means more time to think about how it’s going to turn out! Speaking of which: I’ve had an idea earlier today that may introduce a few wrinkles into the last third of the novel. Let’s see how it develops—I’ll let you know if it makes it into the book.
Friday, Nov. 14 – 38,088 words (+1,314)—Friday Night Overtime
No, thirteen hundred words is not a good total. But it’s a respectable one considering that what I feared would happen actually happened today—I had to do three hours of overtime to get two presentations out today, and that really ate into not only my writing time, but my getting-ready-to-write time that guarantees the success of the writing time. Ah well—everyone gets their presentations, I make extra pocket change and I still managed to throw in a few hundred words and wrap up a tricky chapter. Although, interestingly enough, the last few hundred words written to reach the 38K threshold describe an extremely sadistic stampede of very mundane horror, drawn out much longer than necessary in order to make word count and perhaps even more terrifying because of that. There’s probably a very bad lesson to be learned from this. Can I make up for it tomorrow? I’m not sure—I have a funeral to attend and bad weather to drive through. We’ll see how that goes.
Saturday, Nov. 15 – 40,011 words (+1,923)—Twists and turns
What looks like a poor total for Saturday masquerades a very good day under the circumstances. I knew from the get-go that I wasn’t going to have a 6,000-words day: I attended a great-aunt’s funeral that required about an hour and a half on the road, so that took care of most of the day. But driving is good for brainstorming (especially considering that the much-threatened freezing rain did not materialize until I was almost back home), so I thought about the second half of the novel a lot, and had not one, but two plotting breakthroughs along the way that had me cackling for at least twenty seconds each time. I love when that happens: it means I’m on the right track, simply picking plot elements from my fully stocked Chekhov mantlepiece and arranging them in an obvious, even inevitable order. The two bits that had me cackling make sense from a plotting, a character, a thematic and even a symbolic level: there’s no other way to shape the novel. That would be good enough—and much of the work at the keyboard this evening was spent rearranging my unused pieces of outline into a shape that should carry me through the second half of the novel all the way to the conclusion. So that’s for the novel’s twists and turns. As for the novel-writing twists and turns—just as I was about to pull back my sleeves and dive into the prose of the novel, the power went out in the entire neighbourhood. Since “freezing rain” and “power outage” often combine in multi-hours outages in my neck of the woods, I quickly thanked my Uninterrupted Power Supply, saved my work and arranged to go to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, however, power came back and stayed on, so I was still able to clock in nearly two thousand words of prose guided by this refreshed outline. Not the day I was expecting, but a good day nonetheless. Now let’s see tomorrow if I can action this new outlook on the novel into enough words to feel better about finishing it by the end of the month.
Sunday, Nov. 16 – 44,129 words (+4,118)—Straightforward and ahead
What a good day. Not spectacular—I would have needed at least two thousand more words for that—but satisfying. The writing wasn’t always as interesting (I wrote both a very good scene and a rather humdrum one) but at least it got done, and I burned through two plot points today on my way to the ending. It’s tricky to make estimates still this far out, but I think we’re closing in on somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 words in the end, which would not be a bad length for a pulp horror novel. Part of why I didn’t crank up the word count today is that I took a break to rewatch White House Down with the eyes of someone who’s been obsessing about the White House for the past two weeks—and I have to say that the film gets a lot of things amazingly right. The first 35 minutes (up until the library scene) are remarkably accurate to the layout of the White House as I understand it (or rather how it existed back in 2013) and I’m impressed at how the script managed to cram in nearly everything that was interesting about the White House in its structure. The next days are going to be tricky, as I have many plot points to reach but it’s not yet immediately obvious in which order I need to get to them. (In fact, I just changed my mind again about the timing of the introduction of Abraham Lincoln Human Hunter in-between the beginning of this paragraph and now.) All of this to say: tomorrow may be a thousand-words day, or a three-thousand words day, depending on how the pieces fit together.
Monday, Nov. 17 – 46,140 words (+2,011)—Slow start, great finish
It took a lot to get me going today—lingering headache, a busy day at work, need to exercise and tending to daily housekeeping. The first few sequences were laborious, especially since it was all about scene-setting for the next few plot beats. Fortunately, I found my groove in the rant I had planned for one of my characters, featuring even more presidential desecration which, considering the content of the novel so far, is saying something. Then I committed and ran through one of the most ludicrous plot beats I had been planning for this novel and, well, it came out better than expected. At least I have to look forward to writing one more violent death tomorrow. (Don’t worry—at one upcoming exception, they all deserved it.) Now let’s see if tomorrow can sustain that ending pace, or if I’ll have to start laboriously again. I suspect that there’s a missing plot beat in my outline that’s holding me back—another complication or two before I commit to the third act. At least I still have a few hours to think about it.
Tuesday, Nov. 18 – 47,718 words (+1,578)—Rough day
Today was not the best day. Uninspired plotting doldrums. Also, I had to write an epitaph for a friend.
Wednesday, Nov. 19 – 50,014 words (+2,296)—Past the 50K threshold
Better day today. It was a laborious start, and I did push myself to write later than usual in getting just past 50K, but at least I’ve got one showcase fight done and I’M ABOVE FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS! I’m reaching the 50K landmark later this year than most years (I usually reach it around Nov.15-16), but I’m writing better prose this time around, and I can’t resort to many of my word-padding crutches given the tight space-time unity of the novel. I’m not unhappy with my showcase sequence for the day, a semi-comic brawl between two inhuman characters that does its best to take advantage of the environment in which it’s located. What’s next? At this point I’m thinking that I should stop delaying things and start heading for the conclusion—even if I burn through my remaining plot points one after another, I will easily end up past my 60K objective, and probably closer to 70K. So, tomorrow, I have to resolve a few practical plotting details (e.g.: “How does that character end up in that place for that next plot point to happen?”) and once that’s done, we can onboard the express train to the ending.
Thursday, Nov. 20 – 53,045 words (+3,031)—Late, but on track
Started late (it was meet-the-teachers day) but ended up with a very satisfying three thousand words for two reasons. The first is that I did some plotting since yesterday and ended up with a coherent idea of where to go for the next few thousand words—which always helps, and probably takes us to the point where events cascade into a conclusion. The second, least admirable reason is that good old NaNoWriMo standby—to fill out words, do a few paragraphs of exposition and/or go on a soapbox for a lengthy rant. I did both—introduced a new environment with a few paragraphs of historical context, then threw in a lengthy ham-fisted doom soliloquy from my exposition-service character. Although it is a nice character moment (along with two other good character moments elsewhere in today’s words) and, I can argue, it’s the real and most believable horror set-piece of the entire novel. Because it very well may be real.
Friday, Nov. 21 – 54,512 words (+1,467)—Not good, but promising
After yesterday’s good showing, I’m disappointed at today’s result—sure, it’s not horrible, but I should have done more, especially for a Friday night. At least I’ve moved the pieces of the checkerboard, getting past one important plot turn setting up the rest of the story. But here’s the thing: I’m off to Montréal tomorrow (with an early wake-up preventing me from burning the post-midnight oil) and I’m at a junction where a major scene is coming up and I don’t want to screw it up. This is when I’m usually more cautious than usual, staring a long time into the air as I try to figure out not just the next plot beat, but the best way to maximize it for impact. Going for an early bedtime and mulling over the next steps during hours of driving should help—except I’m not too sure when I’m going to be back home tomorrow. At least this is a familiar feeling: when I will crack the sequence of events, things should flow. We’re not quite at the endgame, but we are certainly in the third and final act now.
Saturday, Nov. 22 – 54,512 words (0)—Nothing, as anticipated
No words today—as mentioned, I spent the day in Montréal and came back after midnight—far too late for a sustained writing session. We resume tomorrow with a big sequence.
Sunday, Nov. 23 – 58,281 words (+3,769)—One big sequence done
As anticipated, today was about one of the big sequences in the last act of the book, a combination techno/thriller/horror scene in which we start winnowing down the number of characters and achieving more of each character’s arcs. A few secrets revealed, some action, checking up on a few characters we hadn’t seen in a while, and all of that good stuff. I would have liked to reach 60,000 words today, but what I have isn’t bad and it’s now bedtime: Time to take a deep breath and think about the next few steps on our way to more deaths and the ending. Amusingly, this was an evening of firsts in this novel and, more broadly speaking, my overall writing experience. I’m pretty sure this is the first time that I have killed off a sympathetic character with a substantial role (although I’ve forgotten many of my early novels) and it’s also the first time that I’ve used a few particularly shocking words in my fiction. I will justify it by pointing at the viewpoint, the prose, and the specific moment in which they’re said, but I have waffled quite a bit before committing to the logic of their use, at one point even thinking, “I guess there are limits even to this no-limits novel.” Having actually used that taboo vocabulary, though, I don’t feel bad about it. But let’s see if the transgression survives the editing phase.
Monday, Nov. 24 – 60,021 words (+1,740)—Not ideal, but now above 60K!
This isn’t the day I wanted—I had no time to think about the next scenes, worried about emergency home repairs, worked late, went to Costco, came back late, and in-between this and that and other things did not have the time to sit down and do what I wanted to, including following up yesterday’s good writing session. I did push the plot a bit forward, made it past 60,000 words (initial objective reached!), spectacularly killed another character and put the survivors closer to where they should go next, but it was still an unimpressive writing session. I’m expecting something similar tomorrow, as much of my evening will be eaten away by attending a board meeting and taking care of other non-writing business. I’m starting to be concerned about whether I’ll finish on time—not necessarily writing THE END by Sunday, which is still more likely than not, but having the time to get the book to a print-ready state by that time. On the other hand, the important thing is to finish the novel no matter how long it takes, not necessarily writing it all by December first.
Tuesday, Nov. 25 – 61,659 words (+1,638)—Still stuck (somewhat)
There are a lot of moving pieces to this novel’s deceptively hermetic setting, with (still) four viewpoint characters and a dozen characters (still) walking around. Wrangling this into a satisfying ending is harder than I thought despite knowing how it’s going to turn out—there are many steps to get the characters where they should be (physically, mentally, emotionally) and there’s this feeling that this is really when the fireworks should go off. It doesn’t help that I had a miserable time getting home and arrived late, that I’ve got a big presentation tomorrow and had an hour of my evening further blocked by a board meeting. After a laborious start in which I shuffled the remaining elements of my outline, I finally committed and wrote four scenes (one of them fairly unusual for my kind of writing), pushing the plot further along. I now welcome the break to think about the next steps, because I’m actually trying to get it right—or reasonably close to what the ending should be.
Wednesday, Nov. 26 – 63,157 words (+1,498)—Maybe cursed
If I was the superstitious sort, I’d see today as a big hint that maybe I shouldn’t aim to finish the novel by Sunday. Despite a great presentation at work, I had to do semi-emergency home repairs to fix a condensation issue with a living room light fixture. My Wi-Fi router suddenly stopped working, which (after checking with my ISP) probably means I have to purchase a new one—fortunately, some wired internet access still works. Plus, I was dead-set on making a test run of my Thanksgiving lasagna in anticipation of hosting family on Saturday, which took even more time away from the novel. And there’s a plot kink I can’t quite untangle yet on my way to the three big set-pieces that will conclude the novel. All of this to say that I started late, had trouble getting excited for what I wrote, but still wrote two scenes pushing the needle forward. I stopped myself on a cliffhanger, because I want to do it justice tomorrow.
Thursday, Nov. 27 – 65,277 words (+2,120)—The way forward is clearer
After yesterday’s rather dispiriting day, today was better. The repairs I did to fix the condensation issue seem to be effective. My Wi-Fi issue turns out to be something else than expected, but until I can fix that, I have reconfigured my networking setup to be functional with very little downside. I also got great feedback on the text so far. (Hello Éric!) But aside from everything else, it’s the novel that got better today: Today’s word total is not bad, but the most important thing is that I did some medium-level plotting to illuminate the way to the conclusion of the novel. There are two chapters and an epilogue to go, and I have a pretty clear through-line to follow now. I’ve unkinked a few unanswered questions and tied most of the plot beats together in a semi-satisfying fashion. I’m not expecting to strictly follow the new outline, but at least it’s a more manageable task than not having a good-enough plan. There are three days left, and probably 10–15K words to go. I won’t ship the novel to the printers on Dec.1 (I’m planning on at least five days of revisions and bonus content for the printed version), but I’m reasonably confident that I can write THE END before the end of November. Although it’s going to come down to the wire on the last day. Something new today: As best as I can recall, this is the first time in thirteen novels that I’m killing a major viewpoint character, let alone in such a gruesome fashion. Hey, this is a horror novel: I have to commit to it.
Friday, Nov. 28 – 65,454 words (+177)—Not much, but not idle
I got stuck in two traps tonight—first, my usual run-through of the novel with a spell checker took more time than previous days, given the latest update to Antidote, now catching new and exciting errors throughout the entire text, and also by the necessity of further plotting what remains to be done. (I’m also dealing with a significantly altered sleep pattern, but that’s something else.) I threw in a few more ideas on the way to the conclusion and clarified the scene-by-scene beats of the next chapters. As a result, the number of words hasn’t changed significantly. I’m fast running out of time if I want to conclude by the end of the month, although I’m redefining my success criteria to be completing the novel and not skipping too many days in order to keep the momentum going.
Saturday, Nov. 29 – 68,652 words (+3,198)—Rolling downhill
I’m running out of time, but today was among the better days I’ve had this month: Since I had a more detailed plan, I just followed the script and wrote the next few sequences. One interesting aspect of today’s writing session was hitting several registers of horror in rapid succession—from the undiluted disgust of unrestrained gory violence to the dread of a suspense sequence to the deeper horror of an entire world sliding into horror. There are about 10K words of plot left in the tank—I’m not sure how much of it I’ll be able to write tomorrow before December 1st arrives, but I guess it’s going to be an interesting day.
Sunday, Nov. 30 – 76,095 words (+7,443)—Novel completed
As I’ve mentioned a few times before: never bet against a writer on a deadline. It all came down to the wire with twenty-five minutes to spare, but I finished the novel today in a frantic bout fuelled by peanut brittle and root beer. The planning work of the past few days paid off in a day that was all about writing one scene after another, in a frantic pace that reflected the nature of the novel’s last few chapters. In some ways, the month ended like it began, with a strong finish to mirror the strong start.
So, there it is—my thirteenth novel, all done. Victory! Well, mostly done—I plan on letting it sit for a day or two, then do at least one complete read-through in order to fix the obvious mistakes and polish the prose a bit. I should be done by next Sunday, after which it’s going to be sent to the printers. But let’s not let this distract from the thrill of having written another book. A different book, in which I tried a few new things while not compromising on my usual voice. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s mine and it’s complete.
Still, let’s not pretend that this was an unqualified success. I ran all the way to the limit this year, and I don’t like it—in previous years, I was able to finish everything with a few days to spare, and I’d like to avoid repeating that in the future. Part of it would be better plotting for the middle stages of the novel: While discovery writing is a large reason why I enjoy writing, I need better signposts along the way. My time management could also use some tweaking, because I’m finishing the month with a backlog of things that need to be completed, and yet I have the feeling that I ran out of time nearly every single day of the month. Work did create problems—my increased workload led me to overtime, later returns home and being unable to daydream about the next plot points during lunch breaks. This writing journal isn’t completely done yet—come back in a few days for overall notes on the novel, what went right and what went wrong.
Monday, Dec. 15 – 79,144 words (+3,049)—That took longer than expected
No, I’m not completely done yet. But I finished my first complete read-through of the novel tonight. Added a few scenes and snippets, fixed a few rough edges that were bothering me, corrected the typos that I could find and massaged the prose a bit.
It took me a while to complete because I was pretty happy to do something other than the novel for the first few days of December—I took care of holiday preparation, gift-purchasing, completed a few things that had accumulated during November and enjoyed not having any daily homework. Then I added a few notes about sources consulted during the writing of the book, wrote a bonus 4,000-words short story discussing the novel that will only be available in the printed version, and threw in my web search history for November as another bonus feature to the print version.
Letting the novel cool off for a few days was also essential. Re-reading it again, I’m not unhappy—I hit most of the targets I had set out for myself, and even exceeded my expectations in some areas. The character work isn’t as deep as I had hoped for, but many scenes turned out far better than I had expected, and I like the steady buildup of the narrative all the way to the frantic conclusion. I held nothing back as I wrote this horror novel (to the point of being a bit “Um, I really wrote that?” during revision) and did pretty well with the much narrower space/time constraints I set for myself. In an email to a friend written well before November, I described my intended novel as “Apocalyptic, merciless, heavy-rock soundtrack, a clash of three supernatural demonic forces and four human characters. Most of it takes place overnight, in the span of twelve hours. Horror devices in service of political raging. Great roles for Canadian characters.”…and you know what? That’s what I wrote.
Next up: Another full Antidote run, and then pouring the novel and its bonus content (including this writing log) into the print-ready template and re-reading it again to catch a few more typos. It will take a few more days. No, I’m not worrying about it being ready for Christmas—I freed myself from that burden a while ago.
Monday, Dec. 22 – 79,905 words (+761)—Done! Print!
Another editing pass completed, and we’re definitely into the diminishing-returns phase of it now, so it’s time to send it to the printers.
As you may gather, I’m very happy with White House of Darkness. In some ways (despite the gory subject matter), it’s the best novel I’ve ever written so far, and I did push myself beyond my comfort zone in a few areas. My late completion of the book is largely due to a compulsion to do better than the usual write-spellcheck-print workflow – I wanted to improve it just a bit more.
So, what’s next for the 2026 novel project? I can still change my mind, but I’m now noodling on an unusual take on a high-fantasy novel – it stated off as a literary genre joke on “techno-thrillantasy”, but I think there’s real juice in the premise to make interesting. See you next November… unless I have another really good idea in the meantime.