If the first week was all about loosing time and track, the second week is where I found I know how to do this and caught up. I’ve got a draft short story* and am working my way through the meat of my plot. I’m a little ahead of target (just as well, because I’ll lose Saturday to roller-derby).
I already know what I’m writing has problems:
- The lead-in is too long. It always is. I’m fine with that. A big point of writing this way is that I get to do a lot of exploration writing which is fun and informative.
- It has a bunch of characters who need to stand out. I’m looking forward to building some of them up.
- The three main story-lines will need a lot of careful editing. If the story is a three-strand braid, I’m currently brushing the hair and gathering the strands. Braiding will come in the editing.
- Maybe most crucially, the plot isn’t as well-developed as I thought it was. I’m OK with that too. There’s time this month to stumble into plot-holes and start filling them in.
I’m enjoying writing while at the same time thinking about how to edit the results. Exploration writing, the big gush of joyful nonsense, is one of the pleasures I derive from NaNoWriMo. The other is knowing that the nonsense was funnelled into something I can use later. This isn’t the first draft but it’s what the first draft will be built on.
I’m filling in the map, I have the tools. And, because this is November, I have the time.
Word count 14/11/18: 23,430
* I wrote an aside. It doesn’t fit the main story-line but when a character says they ran away with the circus you have to explore the how and why of it.