Ten More Days of NaNoWriMo…

It was an insane idea to start participating in NaNoWriMo this year. But I love it. I just wish I had more time.
Work is insane at the moment, but in a good way at least, i.e. I feel productive and I enjoy what I’m doing and I get a lot of positive feedback (or at least no negative feedback *g*). But I’ll probably be working quite a few extra hours this week and next week. Hours in which I can’t work on my NaNoWriMo novel.
My apartment is a mess, because I’m too lazy or too busy or too tired to clean it properly. I feel like I’m constantly forgetting stuff I actually also had to do, but now seem to have slipped my mind. I guess that happens when NaNoWriMo and your novel characters and what’s happening to them has taken over your brain.

I’m not sure I will reach the 50.000 words by the end of next week, but I’ll do my best to try my hardest. I had a hard time getting into a writing mood and mode early at the beginning of November. I guess that might happen to every first time writer.
Writing a scene took and still takes me much longer than I anticipated. I also had a very hard time letting go of the idea that it all had to be perfect in the first draft. I also was to focused on writing all of it chronologically and extensively.
And then I felt bad, when I didn’t manage to put more than the core scene of the main plot into words. I was beating myself up that I hadn’t managed to actually include things like setting, atmosphere, appearance etc. It was basically all just a lot of dialogue, interaction and inner monologue / dramatic narration. It felt so unfinished and I got frustrated.

Until a few days ago I realized that this is or at least can be the whole intent of a first draft. Especially during NaNoWriMo. Well, at least I decided to make it my intention: Write down the core scenes of the main plot. Work on everything else later. Do not start editing anything you have written earlier. Do not go back unless it’s for looking up a detail and probably not even then. If the details don’t match up later, change one of the details.

The good thing is that I have a very clear idea of my main plot and the core scenes of it and thus I don’t really risk getting off track plot-wise. Once I decided to focus on the core scenes I also decided to skip the whole ide of writing those in a chronologic order. So after having written a draft of chapter 1 – 4 in the first 15 days, I now have a piece of chapter 6, a complete draft of chapter 16 and a draft of half of chapter 18. There are 30 chapters (give or take) in my outline by the way.

Will I have finished a complete draft of all chapters or at least the core scenes until 30 November? Probably not. Will I have written 50.000 words? I hope so. I will do my best. Even if that means to not go back to edit things. To not go back and try to improve things. It also means to not go back and delete things, which you might think are crap or unneccessary. They might be useful in the end. And even if it’s just to reach the 50.000 words within the next 10 days.

So yeah, I’m insanely busy, I’m sleep-deprived, since I noticed that I’ll be more productive if I try to write a few paragraphs in the mornings and not only when I get back home from work. But I’m having so much fun to let my muse just run wild. And she is creative and I’m always suprised with which idea she comes up all of a sudden. For instance my outline did not include one of my main characters getting a dog in the middle of the story. But all of a sudden there was a dog. And I loved her and thus tonight I wrote around 400 words about how he got her and why. And I already feel like this dog belongs to this story as much as the main characters do. It’s crazy what a muse can do to your brain :-)

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