chipotle | Random NaNoWriMo thoughts (Reply)

Some days this week have been pretty slow. I came down with a cold on Tuesday, one of the fastest onsets I can remember having; I’m still not completely over it. The upshot of all this is that while I’ve gotten up to nearly 17,000 words, I’m nearly 5,000 words behind the “benchmark” for today. It’d be great if I could write all of Chapter 6 today (my chapters are running around 2,500-3,000 words, with a prologue of just under 2,000). It’s not likely, though, since I have absolutely no clue right now what happens in Chapter 6.

On the other hand, even on slow days I’ve managed a thousand words. (I’ve actually written 900 already today to finish Chapter 5.)

As I’ve been writing I’ve noticed mistakes in what I’ve already done—not awkward phrasings, but stuff that’s just wrong for the way the plot’s developing as it shapes up. And, of course, going back and fixing it would be a mistake; even if I could cheat and count the rewrites as part of my total word count, it seems like it’d defeat the purpose, which is—at least on a personal level—to beat out a complete first draft before I start doing the rewriting.

On the, uh, other other hand, my focus is only improving incrementally. There are still things I’m failing to get to that I need to and my motivation to get to them is still uncomfortably low. They conflict with my aaah, must focus on writing mentality of late. (I’m noticing that one of the main characters in the novel as it’s developing has, as her defining character flaw, an inclination to focus on personal “art” to the exclusion of her expected duties. Hmm. Of course, some of my current expected duties are from projects I took on of my own volition!)

Probably my next writing task is going to be continuing to brainstorm things that need to happen in the novel and arranging them into possible chapters in the outliner—the electronic equivalent of brainstorming on index cards, I suppose.