Sunday, November 11, 2007

Day 11: Nanowrimo (and NaBloPoMo)

Nanowrimo

Words written so far: 19,198 total. Ok - I am color coding this orange because I am ahead of my goal but not quite at my super goal. But I am tired and am going to sleep.

Impressions: I really liked the writing advice in the Nanowrimo pep talk of the week by Naomi Novik. Here is my favorite part of the pep talk and the one I have been using the past two days, "If you're finding a scene boring to write, cut it and skip to the good part. Set something on fire. Have zombies attack." Now I haven't set anything on fire or had zombies attach but I have definitely been skipping to the good parts.

I may be thinking far too much about my story (or perhaps not enough) because I keep trying to find ways to bring it back around. What I suspect is that I have created far too many non-essential characters that I now have to a) deal with and b) figure out something for them all to do. I remember doing this the last time I did Nanowrimo in 2004. At the end of my 50K words, I had like 40 characters which is far too many to keep track of (by me or the readers). I need to be very intentional about adding characters.

My story is very "good guys vs. bad guys". The problem is, the bad guys are generally faceless and nameless (big corporations). This is a problem because you want to get to know your bad guy for them to be realistic. However, this, of course, goes against my point above about creating too many characters. Another quandary to work my way out of.

Likelihood of finishing NaNoWriMo: I am still going strong but I am finding it harder and harder to stay with my story. I need to let my characters take me where they want to go and not worry so much (for this draft anyway) about tying things together. 100%.

Likelihood of finishing NaBloPoMo: I am still in the game.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

perhaps the vampires attack and kill all the non-essential characters?

good luck - you can do it!

ering said...

Oooohhh...I like that. Maybe I could add one vampire but that vampire could take out a whole bunch of characters. I think you may be on to something! Thanks for commenting!

Anonymous said...

Thank heavens you're married to a genius! All I can say is... better you than me. I can't even imagine how to wrestle all of that into submission. I think the most important thing to do is have fun. You may discover later that you've started 2 books and can separate it all out later. That may have happened to CG. Keep up the awesome work. Darned impressive TV life you've got going. xoxoxo