1) having another friend who was also highly motivated to reach the goal as efficiently as possible, 2) timing my writing which usually meant making use of the software Write or Die (especially helpful because you can see your writing progress falling behind if you are writing too slow - great for a first draft or whenever you need to quickly hammer out some ideas, and 3) planning - just enough planning that you knew what scenes you want to write and the general idea of those scenes. With those three points kept in mind, I think anyone could write 70,000 or more in a month, no problem.
Here's my winning certificate to honor the 70,000 words I completed in the first half of my novel's first draft stage:
So this story definitely has a chance of reaching the final draft stage at some point, perhaps even next year? The next goal is 120,000 words by the end of December. For better or worse, I allowed myself about a week of general laziness in terms of writing since December 1st. Once I get out of that, and I'm definitely already feeling the urge to get back to the page (only a mere 550 words or so written in December is getting me down), I should be pumping out the words, as I have a long slew of ideas that still need to be incorporated, and the more the better, as second draft stage will of course require a lot of happy cutting and carving out of a perfect story.
EDIT: managed another 550 words before some viewings of Fringe episodes (jeez, I missed some great episodes in November). And now trying to finish up this blog post before heading back into the world to create some more of the story surrounding the final clans war which leads us into the time of post-apocalyptic survival where the real meat of this novel lies in wait for readers. Building a scene in which we find one of the main characters Never working her way deeper along her downward spiral of disaster her life continues to be from war into post-apocalypse.
