It’s day 18 of NaNoWriMo 2015.
The day before last, I landed at what feels like the midpoint of my novel for NaNoWriMo — the pivotal point at which something in my main character snaps, and she says something she wouldn’t have said earlier in the story.
And she’s not sorry. She wants answers, dammit.
So, anyway, . . . the story is moving, and my main character has decided something. She’s not the same person she was at the beginning of the story. I’m still waiting to see what ultimately happens for her and for those close to her.
I’m also not sure what will happen for the antagonist, now that I’ve shown him to be a liar. I’d say there’ll be hell to pay, but considering the antagonist happens to be a demon (posing as a guardian angel) . . . he’d probably roll his eyes at that.
I’m at about 36,632 words, so far, and my goal is to have to written at least 40K words by the end of this week, since I’d like to meet the 50K goal early. I’m not anticipating having much time (if any) to write on Thanksgiving or on this month’s family birthday. So, two days next week will probably be less productive than most I’ve had so far.
Plus, with my fun new job as lunch lady and kitchen helper at a local school (and I’m not being sarcastic, because it really is a fun job, with good people who make it a good place to work), I have less time during the day to write, but usually still enough — in the evening (my chosen writing time) — to get at least 2,000 words a day. When I get in the zone and just write whatever comes into my head, I can usually write about 2,000 words an hour.
I do use my delete key, though — usually just for typos, but not always.
And frequent interruptions (’cause I’m a mom, and it happens — a lot) make it hard to stay in the zone, but it also makes me all the more determined to get everything down that comes into my head, because it makes it easier to slip back into that zone.
I don’t have a home office. I work in a corner of our living room, using an old sewing table (without the sewing machine) as a desk for my laptop. I have a Spotify playlist that I’ve labeled “Writing/ Editing,” and when I sit down to write, I tell my kids what I’m about to do, and most of them know not to interrupt me unless something needs my attention. To our five-year-old, that encompasses pretty much anything that has his attention. So, interruptions happen quite a lot.
When I’m in the zone, though, I can’t worry about the message this story might send to any readers I might have when it’s done.
I have one mission right now: keep writing until the first draft of this story is done.
I know that a lot of what I’ve written so far will end up on the cutting floor when I’m editing. I can’t think about that now, though.
Must. Keep. Writing.
I read a blog post recently by someone arguing against the idea of writing madly for 30 days on a first draft of a novel that will more than likely be a pile of unusable crap, with maybe a few ideas worth salvaging for a story that will probably take longer than 30 days to craft.
And I was thinking, “You can do what you want. Don’t shit on NaNoWriMo for those of us who are participating and enjoying it.”
It’s my first NaNoWriMo, and if I finish this story — which is a goal greater than that of writing at least 50K words of a first draft — I will know that participating in NaNoWriMo contributed to that victory.
It’ll be the first time I finished an actual novel. And that, fellow writers, is a victory worth celebrating — even before the editing begins.
Write it anyway 