aamcnamara

Because apparently no year of my life lately, or draft of this novel, is complete without at least one early-morning writing session before I have to go somewhere:


And that's a wrap on Part One, I think--12.4k is a respectable size for it, 15% of 80k. In the Events I Really Need timeline, I have gotten through 8 of 28 bulletpoints, but, well, let's not think about that. (If I made a list of Events I Kind Of Need, it would be much longer. And a lot of the changes I'm making got set up in the first part... so there were many bulletpoints there. So.)

I have to admit, there is something I really like about this sort of hurried-pace writing. Ever since a friend of mine talked me into doing NaNoWriDay (attempting to write 50,000 words in 24 hours) with her as 'preparation' for NaNoWriMo, I've felt pretty good about the whole thing. I know that I can type quickly for hours, and invent things off the top of my head if I don't know what I'm doing.

This exercise, however, does not resemble NaNoWriDay (or even NaNoWriMo) in that I hope to come out of it with a coherent draft. Fortunately, it also doesn't resemble those events in that it's not the first time I have written this novel.

I know who my characters are and what they would do in each particular situation; I know what the setting is; I know the plot and have a notion of the structure, I know when each event should fall. And while I've changed a few things about the setting and more things about the plot (setting change feeding into plot change feeding into actually giving my character a motivation to do a couple of previously-questionable things), a lot of it remains the same, and I have a copy of my first draft lurking just a click away that I am totally free to crib good lines, dialogue, or passages from.

This makes it way easier. I'm still composing on the fly, but on a much smaller scale than when writing a first draft, when I'm creating world, characters, setting, plot, and structure wholesale. And in some ways the deadline makes it easier: it forces me to just write--which means I won't get distracted by things or let it sit for months in the middle of the draft, forgetting names and descriptions, what the colors are that the great House wears or what kind of ring the main character has on his right hand. I just keep typing. (The running 'notes' file helps, too, but, well.)

...like those events aforementioned, though, while the deadline's self-imposed, I also have people willing to, alternately, cheer me on or hit me over the head on iChat and tell me to get back to work (browniecakemix! epicrauko! aliseadae!), as well as a whole host of others supporting me in more passive ways. (Including my mother, whom I keep updating with My Wordcount Right Now and who is very patient with me.) I like these people. I might be able to do this without them, but it would be far harder and much less enjoyable.

Yesterday I did the math to figure out what kind of a daily wordcount I'll need to get to 50k by the end of June. Both yesterday and today, I have met it. This is the kind of daily writing, fingers on the keyboard stuff that I learned how to do so well from NaNoWriMo.

(Someday, probably when I have finished this particular novel draft thing, there will be a post about the differences between my experience writing a novel for NaNoWriMo and writing a novel on my own.)

Oddly, when I write short stories I am never satisfied with just writing a short story that is easy to read and understandable, that has a plot that readers can follow. I always complicate things with layers or hidden meanings or vagueness. But a novel is long enough that apparently just putting one story down on paper is enough to satisfy my brain. As exemplified by this novel, which has spelled out just about everything about itself.

Maybe I am secretly a novella writer, and there's a happy medium in length where I can complicate things, but not too much. (I kind of hope not.)

Maybe I will learn over time to complicate my novels a little more, and to uncomplicate my short stories. (This is the one I should probably aim for.)

Maybe I should just shut up and keep writing.