Category: NaNoWriMo

#Nanowrimo update – Day 4

There’s a fork in the road.

It could be worse.

Chapter two now seems to be about what it should be about and leads into chapter three.

But …

Oh no, here we go … that inevitable but …

Chapter four is now relatively new writing which requires a new chapter five, ready to give an extra twist to the plot.  It hasn’t changed radically, but marginally.

For now.

Chapter five, tomorrow’s task, is completely new and will require some extra thought while I’m asleep.

Or perhaps I should make a few brief notes now!

 

 

NaNoWriMo Update – Day 3

How quickly things change.

Chapter two is now chapter three and I need to add some new words in what will become chapter five because of a small change in chapter one.

The plan is changing, but that is always the case when you start delving into the motivations and actions of characters, and how they may react to a certain situation.

I had sketchy outlines of characters to begin with, but they, like the plot, will evolve as I move forward.

Nothing like writing a story where the end is still not clear in my head.

Outside it is very hot, and inside where the writing is happening, I need to be cold, cold as Scotland in winter with snow, so getting into the scene is going to be quite difficult.

I wonder how low I can turn the air conditioner …

NaNoWriMo Update – Day 2

The best-laid plans of mice and men …

All come to grief when you begin writing.  Sure, you have a plan, it may be meticulous, it might be scrambled, it might be almost perfect.

I thought mine was almost perfect.

Then chapter one started and I reached a fork in the road.  This way or that, or another altogether.

It was a possibility I didn’t see in the planning stage.

Will it affect the outcome?

Too early to tell.

Part of chapter one has now become chapter two, and the ripple effect had changed the number of chapters.

The good news, 2,241 words written.

Let you know more tomorrow!

NaNoWriMo – Progress update

After spending a number of harrowing days trying to plan, plot, and replot, sort out the characters and their characteristics, discover locations and read up on them, learn as much as possible about the props, it was time to let loose the pencil.

But, sadly, all the plotting in the world does not translate to instant words on a page.

I started writing.  Great.

I hated what I wrote.

Deleted it.

Started again.

The blank page was staring back at me, daring me to write more of those terrible words, disorganized thoughts, random passages that had no connection.

No, it’s not writer’s block.

It’s pressure, the pressure of having to write 1,800 odd words in a day, this day, and tomorrow, and the day after that.

Enough!

I go outside and look at the mess in the backyard, the one I’ve been promising to do something about for the last 10 years.  Perhaps it’s now time.

As rubbish goes into the bin, ideas form, passages start writing themselves in my mind, plot lines seem to materialize and make sense.

I go back in and write.

Day 1 over, 1,916 words written.

Just think, come tomorrow I have to go through all this again.  Sigh!

I’m in training for NaNoWriMo

It’s frightening to think that I have to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Yet I have done it before, last November in fact.  But I believed then I couldn’t do it and didn’t enter.  At the end of November, I surprised myself and finished up with a novel titled ‘If Only’.

Rather apt I thought at the time; if only I’d entered!

But this year, I’m in.

Usually, I sit down and start writing, not sure where it’s going to take me.  Some say a book needs to be meticulously planned,

Characters planned down to their foibles,

Plot lines to drive the characters, adding twists and turns until the surprise ending that no one saw coming.

Even me.

All in 30 days?

Another issue I have is that when I start writing, it is not necessarily the ‘start’.

Some of my stories in the rewrite, or even when I’m halfway through, suddenly cry out for a new start, something relative to the plot earlier, or a missed detail will come to you, usually in the most unlikely place, and this for me is the shower.

This can cause a cascade of rewrites of earlier chapters.

Nothing a little planning might have resolved, but there will not be time.

It’s going to be a challenge.

At least I have a title, The Enemy Within.

I have the basis for the central character, a man who doesn’t quite fit in.  I have a clear idea of where it will end, but that could change slightly as the story progresses.

I basically know where and when it will start.  I’ve always like the start to the James Bond films, that short period when the action of pulsating just before the credits, a small slice of what’s to come.

What’s in between?

That will be topis for November.  What I’ve written and where it’s going.

Stay tuned.