Three notebooks should be enough to contain 21st Century Airship Princess

I can type much faster than I can write. But I’ve been enjoying writing my latest WIP by hand. I’ve done that before with short stories, but this is the first time I’ve attempted a novel.

The notebooks I used before perfectly held a story between five and ten thousand words, my target zone for The Cities of Luna. I only write on one side of the page, and I add notes and such to the back sides. I love how I can add random gibberish as well as considerate notes to myself. I also make a note about where and when I’m writing, whether at home, poolside at our apartment, at the library, or wherever. I look forward to looking back over this rough draft someday.

I’ve almost finished notebook two, and I noticed something odd. I thought I’d have to use five notebooks to make a fifty thousand word novel, but apparently these notebooks are longer than the ones I used before. They can fit around thirty thousand words, which means I’m probably already close to the fifty thousand mark if not well beyond it.

That’s good and bad. I feel my pacing is way off, something that can be fixed in edits. Plot wise, I’m only about halfway there. I have a list off stuff that needs to happen, but I think I’m including way too much filler in between. I’m going to use notebook three to get all those scenes out, even if it’s a hot mess. The next step is to set it aside for a bit, preferably at least a month or two, then I will do revision two as I transcribe.

So that’s been my writing update for the week…I know I’m not being specific about my goals, but I’m just happy (for now) that I am getting some writing in and making some progress.

Question for the rest of you: Is there something about your writing method that changed as you grew?