Note from Jules: I’m sorry these updates were so late, but I hope you enjoy them!

The fourth week of October has now passed, and there are only 3 days left in October!  The madness of Preptober is almost complete, and the insanity of NaNoWriMo is about to begin!

Once again, from the 22nd to the 30th, we had 3 different moon phases, followed by the final moon phase on the 31^st.

The first was the Waxing Crescent, which is the carryover moon phase from last week.  The full span of this phase ran from the 17^th to the 22^nd.

The second phase was the 1^st Quarter Moon, which occurred on the 23rd.

The third phase was the Waxing Gibbous Moon. This phase occurs between the 24^th and 30^th, followed by the Full Blue Moon on Halloween.

Each moon phase has its own writing tasks, which you can read about in the previous post which explained the full Moon Phase Writing Experiment HERE.   Or you can watch the video on The Dawdling Writer YouTube channel HERE!

There are blog posts for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 already posted. Feel free to read those first to get a better idea of what I was attempting during this experiment.

October 22nd, Waxing Crescent Moon / 1^st Quarter Moon Window

I wrote 0 words.  But I tried to sort out (within my brain) some of the plot holes my new characters and their backstories created.

October 23rd, 1^st Quarter Moon

I wrote 2,202 words on this day, and I focused mainly on the risks the new characters would take within their “stasis equals death” moments, and then what they would need to sacrifice in order to achieve the goal they want to achieve.  The risk and sacrifice needed to feel as if they were equal in weight.

October 24th, 1^st Quarter Moon Window / Waxing Gibbous

I wrote 2,317 words on this day.  All of the “risks” I considered on the 23^rd were for the protagonists and secondary (but still the “good” guys) characters.  I focused on the risks the antagonistic characters were taking for this day.

October 25th, Waxing Gibbous

I wrote 2,800 words on the 25^th. I made a mock cover for Book 1 of this series. That was fun!  I’ll insert a picture. Again, this is a mock cover with a project title rather than a working title.

I attempted to figure out the fatal flaws for the new characters (the ones who will be protagonists in later books).  I also was fleshing out character by assigning them skills, careers, and hobbies.

October 26th, Waxing Gibbous

I wrote a fantastic 5,801 words on the 26^th.  I focused on the factions, or groups, of shape shifter communities.  I wound up doing a bit of research on “apex predators,” the altitudes they live in, preferred environments and diets, etc. Based on this information, I rearranged my world map and how some of the character groups interact. With this added knowledge I could figure out which groups were potentially allies or rivals for territory.

October 27th, Waxing Gibbous

I wrote a total of 3,246 words for the 27^th. I realized that a pair of characters didn’t really seem to fit with the world framework. I spent some time attempting to figure out a way for them to fit in the world. Spoiler: after considering it for another day, I don’t think it will work.

October 28th, Waxing Gibbous

I wrote 2,503 on the 28^th. I worked on expanding the lives of the secondary characters and their interactions with each other and the ties they have with the main characters of Book 1 and the antagonists.  I brainstormed and scrapped some backstory ideas for the main villain.  One of the ideas may be suitable after a modification or two.

October 29^th, Waxing Gibbous

This ended up being a rest day in regards to my writing. To be honest, I was really beginning to feel like I had planned all I needed to and I wanted to begin drafting.

October 30^th, Waxing Gibbous

I wrote an additional 2,290 words on the 30^th.  I made a chapter and scene outline that was pretty general to a romance, to make sure I had the basic beats down.  After I did this, I worked on more character building (yet again).

October 31^st, Full Moon (Blue Moon)

This was the second full moon in the month (also known as a Blue Moon) and the second Blue Moon in the year.

For the last day of October, the last chance to write before NaNoWriMo, however, I did not write anything.  I had enough of a word count to make me satisfied for the month, and I just felt like I was tired of “planning” and I wanted to draft. Since I wanted to stay true to the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I wanted to hold off drafting, so I took the day off.

Week 4 Summary

For the last week and three days of this Moon Phase Project, I wrote a total of 20,871 words. This means that by the end of this week, I’d already written 68,045 words for the whole month. 

That is 136% of a NaNoWriMo goal! That is WAY above what I need in December.  It is also 162% of the way to the half-Milwordy monthly goal. 

Don’t know what the Milwordy challenge is?  Read about the mad dash to one million words in a year HERE in an earlier blog post.

Interested in the first week’s breakdown? It has a lot more details about how I got my initial inspirations for this story.  Read about it HERE.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of the progress for each moon phase and day.  This experiment is very fun, and I am enjoying changing my focus just a little bit every few days.

If you want to hear more about the project’s details, feel free to hop on over to The Dawdling Writer YouTube channel for some live writing sprints and chatting about our stories. I stream regularly Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 1-3 PM Eastern, and Sundays 2-5 PM Eastern.