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Here we are on Day 7 of National Novel Writing Month! It’s hard to believe the first week went by so quickly. So far, I’ve been doing pretty okay! I surpassed my total from last year on day three, and it’s been mostly full-steam ahead since then!
I have found some scenes are harder to write than others. I should probably also add that I have three main characters, and I’ll be switching POV between them. I had a hard scene to write for my first MC on Wednesday, but luckily I was able to power through it. Friday was tough. I hit the first POV change, and I realized that while I’ve always had a plot mapped out for this character, I had never gotten inside their head like I had for the other two MCs. Que ~PaNiC~. It was not a pretty sight. To top it off, they needed to argue with another character, who I also hadn’t developed as much as I thought. I wrote something, but it didn’t sit well with me, nor did it flow at all with the rest of what I had written, and I stewed over it all evening. Saturday and Sunday I was actually traveling, but I had planned to write where I was. This didn’t happen, not only because I was having too much fun, but also because every time I thought about my MC I cringed, because what I had written was so out of sync with everything. I stewed some more. I stewed the whole drive down to Connecticut and the whole drive back to Boston. I attempted to write Sunday night, but it resulted in staring at the screen with my brow furrowed, frustrated and blocked by what I saw. I needed to pull back. When I write, I have a habit of putting all the information out there, but for the sake of the reader, I really should only let a bit of information slip at a time. I’m building a character, not explaining to the reader why I think they’re complex or complicated. I have to remember to show, don’t tell, which for me is extremely difficult.
So today I started behind about 2690 words, and I still had my initial 1667 to write for the day on top of that. I’m also back on a schedule where I’m only writing while the baby is napping, so that limits my time greatly. On the bright side, knowing that I have to stop when he wakes up gives me a deadline, and I work great under pressure or ahead of a deadline. I just can’t enforce them on myself. So having a baby who is going to wake up anywhere from 30-120 minutes from when I start writing is actually a great motivator.
So far today I’ve written 2012 words, which means I only have 2463 left to write to get my average back to where it was. Ninety percent of what I wrote was a redo of what I did on Friday afternoon, that awful scene that desperately needed to be redone. Now that it’s fixed, I can continue on from there, so I should hit the second POV change either later today or early on tomorrow. The original scene was 1170 words, so while I’ll still be counting that towards my 50000 word total for the moment, I’ve decided to move it to the bottom of the document where it won’t bother me. I don’t see the point of deleting over 1000 words if it’s going to ultimately mean that I don’t hit 50000. I don’t anticipate this being a problem, and if I end up being able to cut it out before the month is over without ruining my word count, I will. We’ll just have to see how things go.
The word count goal for today is 11666, and I am currently sitting at 9203 with the unusable 1170. I’m hoping to write another 2000-3000 words today to at least hit 11666, and ideally to hit 12310, which would make a grand total of 5000 words for the day to make up for not writing at all over the weekend and still push me ahead to where I should be.
How is your writing going? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Let’s chat about it on Twitter! You can also add me as a writing buddy on the NaNoWriMo website. Happy writing!
Until Next Time,
~Amanda
Below you can find some notes I made about my writing totals so far this month.
DAY # – GOAL/ACTUAL (AHEAD/BEHIND) – NOTES
Day 1 – 1667/2005 (+338) Day 2 – 3333/3403 (+70) – Had a really hard scene to write today 😦 Day 3 – 5000/5416 (+416) Day 4 – 6666/7310 (+644) – Hit the first POV change! Success! Day 5 – 8333/7310 (-1023) – Writer’s Block! Boooo… and traveling! Day 6 – 10000/7310 (-2690) – Still travelling.. Day 7 – 11666/9203* (-2463*) – Back to writing during nap time. Catching up!
*Running total from today