I thought it might be fun to share some of the things that have happened already in this NaNo write for those who might be following along. It’s already been a learning experience for me and probably for a few other.
Day one – I started off with a bang and wrote for around six hours. Two chapters later, I felt like I had a solid start. I was sticking with my chapter outline.
Day two – I was slow to start. Distracted by everyone and everything – brain bounce is not a norm for me but it happens.
Then I got in trouble – I wrote a small bit about my heroine going to a local gym to fit in a workout. Not your usual LA Fitness kind of place. This is a place that doesn’t advertise. Janice was sent there by her teammate who happens to know the owner, a man named Oscar Islas. Oscar is an ex-SEAL and his gym is for the specialists – bodyguards, cage fighters, mercenaries, etc. Oscar is also someone that Janice finds herself so comfortable with that she tells him of her concerns about her future. I like Oscar – a lot.
This little meeting grew from what should have been a couple paragraphs of “color” to several pages and an interesting character who could seriously alter my plot. I’m not sure yet what Oscar means to the story arc. At the very least, Janice will be thinking about him at some point and possibly comparing him to Mac. Just how much of a conflict or what role he will play isn’t clear to me.
Now – if I was a man writing “manly” books. My hero would meet someone other than the woman that he’s supposed to be interested in and if he liked her, he’d simply have an “interlude” and then go on with his life. All the female readers would roll their eyes, while the male readers would beat their chests and nod enthusiastically. But if I let Janice enjoy an “interlude” with Oscar while she’s still interested in Mac – she’d be nothing more than the Whore of Babylon. Breaking that tradition might be honest, but it could also make Janice an unsympathetic character and hurt the book.
Day three – By eight p.m. I had not even opened my document. I realize that everyone thinks all I do is write, but I don’t get to do it 24-7. I have other things that require my attention such as appointments, cleaning, and grocery shopping, so no writing. That is until Heather Rae Scott fired off a Facebook post that she was going to do the 1K in 1 hour challenge, and wondered who would care to join her. That’s picking an hour out of the day and trying to get a thousand words down. I said what the heck and jumped on the bandwagon.
Chapter four began with a new character being laid off from his job. I don’t know if this is really my bad guy or if he’s related to my bad guy. I’m still not sure I can actually write from a psycho’s perspective. I’m not even sure if this chapter will stay in the story, but we’ll see – editing is for December. I didn’t make the thousand words in the hour – I came in at 850, but I kept working for another half hour to finish up the chapter and ended with over 1100 words.
Not bad for a day that I hadn’t planned on writing anything.
The one other thing that I wanted to share is that I’m not worrying about a daily word count. If you divide up the goal of 50,000 words for the month, it’s 1667 per day. That’s a doable goal, but what if you have a day like I had today? I have days where the words pour out and then I have days where I couldn’t choke out 500 if my life depended on it. I’ve decided to go with a weekly goal of 12,500 so I don’t worry about a day like today. We started on Tuesday, so I have until Monday to meet my goal. If I hit it before then, I’ll let you know. I’m confident that I will.
I hope you are all having some success with your writing – keep at it!!!
