07 November 2011

NaNoWriMo: Week 1

*comes up for air*

Yeah, that's what it feels like! How is everyone else doing in the trenches? I have to admit I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed, but still trying to keep up. Whether I keep up for the month is still a huge question mark. Even if I finish with the 30,000 I originally talked about, I'll have achieved a lot more than I would have otherwise.

My NaNo effort started poorly. On day 1, something else came up that I had to attend to with my husband, so not a word was written. I tried to catch up on day 2, but I just fell short of one daily word count. By day 5, the mounting shortfall had me quite uncomfortable, so over the weekend I sort of cheated by pulling in some scenes (or scene ideas, which I then wrote) that I thought of prior to November. Even that didn't catch me up. Today I wrote 2,500 words, so I'm just 500 shy of the target. Another 2,000 tomorrow and I'll be there - but today I already had quite strong ideas about what I wanted to write in an important scene. I have probably five other scenes like that in my head... and then what will I do? *wrings hands*

The problem is that scenes generally occur to me organically, and not in order. And trying to rush the process like this might be counter-intuitive. If I run out of ideas, I won't be able to keep going. As I predicted, writing consecutively (chronologically) is also a struggle. I banged out chapter 1, because I already had a pretty good idea of what that needed to be, but then chapter 2 descended into scrappy notes and character brainstorms. I know I need to keep working on developing the story including minor storylines, but for now I need to write the scenes I know exist and hope the intervening chapters come to me (or that I get time to think through them properly).

All the advice I'm reading says, "Don't try to make it good, don't edit, don't research, don't try to form a proper book - go back later and fix it". I'm realising this flies in the face of my instincts... I want to make my sentences or word choice correct from the beginning, and I hate leaving paragraphs that I know won't make the cut later. For now they have to stay, so that they can lead into the next thing. I also can't really "free-write" as such... I do have to have some idea of what a scene will achieve before I start. Perhaps that will come as I get more desperate towards the end!

So, another three weeks. This seems like madness, but it's a madness I very badly want to abide by so that I can achieve something special. I already have those nagging doubts (maybe this isn't special at all, and it only has 20,000 words in it), but I need to persevere just in case there's a real book in this idea. This whole writing thing does seem incongruous sometimes.

Week 1 Summary:

Day 1 - 0 words
Day 2 - 2407 words
Day 3 - 1454 words
Day 4 - 1384 words
Day 5 - 1019 words
Day 6 - 2411 words
Day 7 - 2515 words

Total = 11,190
Target = 11,669

2 comments:

  1. YOu seem to be on track, whether you think it's a shortfall or not. You're writing, that's all that counts. Just keep on keeping on. You'll get there.

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  2. Awesome job! You did great!

    I'm not officially participating, but have set my own word count goals. After this week, I'm taking a break. I've been going at it strong since mid October.

    Don't look back...just move forward.

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