NaNoWriMo Days 7, 8 & 9 : That moment when it all falls together

The second week of NaNoWriMo is upon us! Some interesting things happened during my writing sessions that I'm anxious to share. But first, here's my current status.

Words written November 7-9: 864
Total words so far: 6629

Remembering the plan

The novel I'm working on I started in NaNoWriMo 2012. Back then I imagined I was writing a trilogy and I threw plot on the screen until I managed the 50,000 words (only a few hours before the deadline).

I knew that what I had written covered book one and into the first half of book two, but also that book one would need a lot of work. Plot on its own isn't that interesting (that whole show don't tell thing). But I could see how the story broke up into three distinct books.

Fast forward to Camp NaNoWriMo this year when I finally opened up my old files and began working the story again.

Suddenly I didn't see it. What was I thinking? There's no way there's enough to make a trilogy. Maybe, maybe two books. I spent some time moving the work into Scrivener and organizing it (you can read some of the detail in this post on Steemit).

I think I wrote a few more updates, but that gives you the idea. Using Scrivener's tools I put things in order and figured out what I needed to do.

I messed up

Until November 7th when I realized I hadn't figured it out. In fact, I'd messed up something critical.

While going through and marking chapters as "Done" or "First Draft", I accidentally marked one that wasn't written.

The bigger mistake was that the one I mis-marked is literally the majority of the meat of Book 1 - as I had envisioned it in 2012. It was a chapter that had a description of "Traveling through the mountain and stuff happens". That's what was on the little index card thingy in Scrivener. In the chapter, I had some notes of what happened. Two sentences maybe. And that was it.

So, the bells started ringing, light bulbs went off and my 2012 vision came flooding back to me.

I immediately changed my outline and moved all of the chapters I thought went into book one into book two where they belong. What I had been calling book two is now book three though I will have to massage the exact break point between them later.

What I've written so far is spread between books one and two, so I'll have some accounting to do at the end of the month when I verify my word count at the NaNoWriMo website.

When in doubt, just start writing

After the rush of remembering the plan, I froze. The one chapter I had missed I knew was actually more than one chapter. I'm guessing it will add up to 20-30 thousand words total when I'm done. Like I said, it really is the heart of the whole first book.

I had already written that day and it was approaching midnight so I put my word count in and went to bed. When I woke the next morning I still felt frozen. That section of the book is so important it needed to be done right. It needed drama, adventure, love, risk and danger...all written well and believably.

So I took that day off. Yup. I intentionally took a whole day off in NaNoWriMo. Stupid move for someone only half way to par in the word count. But I felt it was necessary. Now that the plan was clear, I needed to let the ideas ruminate in my mind. I figured I'd hit the ground running on the 9th.

I looked ahead and planned to write early, while my son was in classes in the afternoon. But I got grabbed by another Mom and spent the two hours talking instead. Moving on, I didn't get to start writing until after 11 pm. I was super tired by then and still feeling frozen about what to write or how to even start that part of the story.

I considered giving up for the day. You know, give my inner cow more time to ruminate.

But I couldn't get up. And I couldn't write. So I began procrastinating.

I surfed a little bit and ended up on YouTube, uploading the week 1 winners video to have it available in case Dtube didn't work.

Procrastination to salvation

And there it was. My salvation in the list of suggested videos:

Now, I often use binaural beats when writing, but I mostly use an app. Once in a while I'll look on YouTube for something but I don't think I'd done it recently. And the suggested video isn't one I'd used before.

I took it as a sign and clicked play. Then I went back to Scrivener, opened up the editor and just began typing. I started with a scene about my antagonist. I find these the hardest to write. But I did just start writing. Before I knew it midnight was approaching and I was in the flow of it. The words were coming out easily, albeit clumsily.

I stopped and entered my word count into the website, then continued until the scene was done. It didn't end up being a whole lot of words, but they were written.

Anyone else up for a sprint?

I'm super happy to have written rather than given up. And I'm also happy to have another resource for binaural beats I know I can turn to when I need to focus. It works!

Now, I need to get serious about word count. So Monday here is a holiday, which means a break from our usual activities.

My calendar now has that as a sprint day. What's a sprint day? It's when you write as much as you can, as fast as you can. I'm setting a goal for 10,000 words. I think I can do it, if I keep that inner editor quiet and bar the door.

Is anyone else up for the challenge (as if NaNoWriMo isn't challenging enough already!)?

If you are planning one, or have done a sprint already, share in the comments. You'll be an inspiration for all of us!

 

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://nightowlwriter.com/2018/11/09/nanowrimo-days-7-8-9/

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