I'm not sure what other people accomplish; I can't write a novel in a month, even if I weren't working full time, but I also imagine others are more driven than I am (seriously, that wouldn't be hard). Conversely, I also know that the likes of Stephen King and John Scalzi don't get their stuff done in a month–and Scalzi's novels are under 100k (I believe he said they tend to sit between 80-90k), so expecting someone to pump out a 60-80k novel in 30 days is unreasonable. Also, you try writing 2k words a day (which is what Stephen King does). Unless you start repeatedly typing "balls" over and over again, it's hard to do with fiction. Especially for those of us who self-edit as we type, removing many extraneous words (no, "that' is not necessary for much beyond padding a word count). Less hard for academic work–not easy, mind you–or editorial pieces, but never easy.
That said, it should be entirely possible to get the barf draft out in a month. It won't be pretty, but it will be something complete to work with. At least that's my goal. Barf a full first, very rough, draft into Scrivener by 30 November, then leave it be until January or so, when I'll go back and start editing it for various plot holes, bad phrases, etc.
And I'm cheating. I took this week off from work (and the whole month off from Girl Museum, which is really weird for me, as I've not had a proper break from GM since I started in January of 2010), so I get an extra 2 days. Possibly up to 5, if I extend through the first weekend of December. Also, I wrote the first chapter several years ago, so I'm around 1100 words up to start with.
Though I'm only working on Chapter 3, and fairly certain that I really only have one chapter, just with a couple of breaks in it. Meh. I can sort that nonsense out later. Barf a draft up, first!
Don't expect this to be a regular thing, but for now, I leave you with this, the very beginning.
“That went well, I think.”
Anya looked at Lila in disbelief. “In what world did that go well? Sandwich is missing part of his little finger and all of his eyebrow, Nate is still unconscious, and you, well you’re just having a bullet dug out of your shoulder. None of that can be defined as ‘well,’ Captain.”
