break-thru

By day 3 of NaNo (yesterday), I was feeling stressed...okay, I was actually feeling stressed the Sunday night before NaNo officially started...but on day 3, I had only 800 words swirling inside a clumsy opening scene. Needless to say, I was feeling frustrated & DE-flated...who am I to try to write a novel when I haven't even tried writing many short stories. Pounding out a couple thousand words for a short story is tricky enough, but crafting an entire novel...making 50,000 words come together in a way that creates interest & also makes sense, with only 7 days preparation? Yeah, it wasn't looking good for me.

FYI: 50,000 words in 30 days = approximately 1,667 words per day or 12,500 words per week.

I was watching other NaNo writers hit their daily word counts, feeling myself getting further & further behind as I massaged the same 800 words over & over & over. I have to give myself some credit--from the get-go I completely intended to get most of my word count in at the weekends & wasn't going to freak myself out with needing to produce 1,667 words every-single-day (especially when I sit in a cube for 8 hrs of those weekdays). But these 800 words were taunting me & the the more I hoped they'd turn into something that would work, the more they simply refused to play nice. Actually the words were fine (some even good). It was the scene itself that was refusing to be my friend. Bottom line--what I was trying to make into the opening scene, was not in fact the opening scene.

Just as I was having thoughts of throwing in the towel, I had a mini break-thru yesterday at work...yeah, yeah, I know, shhh, don't tell them, okay?! I scribbled the ideas down as they kinda flooded me, cramming as much messy handwriting as I could into my handy dandy pocket novel notebook. I "outlined" the first scene, and then the next 2 scenes, during this break-thru. Nothing flowery, mind you, just basic thoughts "she leaves here...she meets him there...she's nervous, she has a secret...he's nervous, he too has a secret..." that I would use as my guide when I could actualy sit down at the computer later that night from home and flesh it out all literary like!

And by golly it worked. I hammered out 1,200 new words with relative ease last night...granted, they're rough, some even ragged, but they're down on the page & they're working to propel the story & that's about all I can hope for this month.

December can be for the gentle soothing of revision's loving and tender embrace. November is gonna be like sex in a public restroom with a stranger...dirty & fast!

xoxo!