Day One

Well, day one appears to be in the books, or in Chapter One for me. I didn't make my personal goal of 2,500 words today, but I made the NaNo goal of 1,667 (actually hit 1700). I'm not done with Chapter One at this point in time, but it looks like 2,500 words might actually be close to what is necessary. On the other hand, what was written today is full of verbosity, run-on sentences, and at least one info-dump. So when I go back through and trim the chapter may it end up being closer to 2,000 words. I'm also not convinced this is the beginning of the story, but that may be due to said info-dumb. There's a lot happening to Rin, and it all centers around the weirdness that is the world north of the Frostwood.

I knew I would have trouble not 'constant editing' and I sure did. There was a good page gone before I loosened up enough to just type. Even then I was popping back up and changing stuff. At least towards the end it was due to either forgetting a plot point I had added at the last minute (happened once) or I needed to add a mini flashback for explanation.

There are still some weak points in the underlying concept of the 'bad guy'. None of those change the plot, and I'm hoping they'll just get worked out in the writing. I still maintain that I'm a discovery writer, and in the past that's how I've worked out plot issues. I have never done it with a novel though.


 

Two Days to Go...

NaNo starts Monday, and today I added another view point character.  I wasn’t sure if I could produce 2,500 words a day from one Point Of View (POV), and the other Main Character (MC) won’t work as a POV.  I wanted more than one POV anyway, as a way to provide commentary from a different perspective; especially commentary about the protagonist.

Right now, the title I have listed on the NaNo web site is Leaf & Steel.  I don’t really like it.  The phrase comes from a pretty good line early in the story, but I don’t know how well in conveys the message of the book.  Speaking of book concept; I’ve been trying to write a short ‘back-of-the-book’ synopsis to go on the NaNo site as well…and now I see why most authors have more trouble writing a synopsis than writing their actual novel.

I’m what’s called a ‘constant reviser’  I write a paragraph, read it, edit it, write another paragraph, go back to the first one, revise both, and so on and so on.  I’m hoping NaNo can break me of that.  I don’t think the revisions are that good to begin with, and then I’m writing so slowly I can’t put out a decent story in a reasonable amount of time.  I’m doing that even now…to this blog post…just did it again…dang.

What I need to do, is write a chapter, story, section – what have you – and then revise the whole thing.  My plan now, is to write in the morning before work, just write; stream of conscience almost.  Then on the days I can take a lunch break, head somewhere quiet and revise.  If I don’t have the time for that, I’ll pick up revisions on the weekend. 

I don’t think I can go all the way through the month without revising.  I can’t quit cold turkey.  But I can limit myself to the amount and timing of my revising.

I’ve laid out the first week in outline form.  I’ve hit a snag that will only get worked out when I actually start writing.  The general, Three-Act structure is still there, it’s just the daily outline that’s coming up short.  Of course, now that I’ve thrown in another POV character, I’ll have to revise that outline as well, but that is a matter of pushing some of the days into next week and adding the new chapters in where they go.  The hang-up is still in the same place.

Hopefully I’ll have a positive update for Monday night, with a word count above 2,500.  That’s a lot of pages though.  I’m not sure what to expect, though I am excited.

NaNoWriMo

A few friends and myself are attempting the "...fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing" that is nanowrimo.  The object is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November.  Quantity, not quality is the goal.  That said, I am still hoping to take an existing idea, write the novel, and then after November, revise it.  In the end, the story may not be worth revising, but I won't know until it's written.

Those of us involved are doing some prep work this month.  Our first assignment is to plot out (very basic three act structure with hooks) three ideas and present them for consideration.  My ideas have been kicking around in my head for so long, I don't even know that they're good.  So I'm very interested to see what the others think.

I'm hoping to get a lot of outlining done here with the rest of October.  I think I'm a discovery writer.  I say that having written quite a few short stories, but no novels.  What I don't think I can do though, is discovery write a 50K word novel in a month.  So this could be a good exercise for me.  I may find that to tackle something the size of a novel I need that structure regardless of time.

I've started blogs before for various reasons.  I've even started one to blog about writing.  We'll see what happens after November - I guess we'll see what happens during November - but I hope to keep up with my writing on here; maybe do some reviews of books I'm reading and those I've read, talk up some other authors. 

I'm working now on a structure for my days in November (and possible beyond) that will give me a few hours to write.  This exercise will require, on average, 1,600 words a day to make the goal of 50K.  I'm not sure what to expect once I get beyond 'chapter 3'.  I've written 1,600 word stories in an hour, and spent days on one that came in under a thousand.  Will the book get easier the further in I get?  Will I bog down on the 'boring bits'?

I'm hoping the outline, and prep work we plan to do this month will keep things rolling along.

Time to go outline...