Sunday, November 11, 2012

Work Free Friday...

Well we finished out our first week of NaNoWriMo (well technically a little more than a week) and when we hit the weekend, I got my first taste of distraction.  I just could not bring myself to focus and sit down and write.  It wasn't like I didn't have ideas in my head to write about.  In fact, I was still working on a scene I had been looking forward to writing, but which hadn't really gone as well as I had hoped.  (Yeah I know it is technically editing which is sort of contrary to the whole purpose of NaNo, but whatever, I break some of the rules- it's how I roll :) )

Rather, it was just like I couldn't bring myself to sit down and actually write.  I sat down to start my work and here is what I did instead:

1.  Checked Facebook

2.  Checked Twitter

3.  Checked my Email

4.  Checked Twitter again (this is seriously going to be my downfall, I mean there is always something new posted and all I have to do is click on some link and I'm distracted and going down the dangerous path which is the twitter time suck.  Its addictive.  Even the distraction free screen on scrivener doesn't keep me from getting on twitter.)

Finally, I gave up getting any work done on Friday.  It was late, and I knew whatever I wound up writing I would likely delete on Saturday, so instead I decided to take the night off.  I spent the rest of the night reading parts of books I've already read.  Which is weird, right?  The thing is, I was trying to figure out why I like certain books so much, why I would spend the little time I have rereading stories over and over again, and I think it comes down to the characters.  There are some characters you either identify with or you just love.  Of course this is a very subjective thing, but I was thinking what it is about these characters that I like so much.  What causes me to identify with them or have crushes on them and I came up with some common features, most of which I value in the people I know and love, or wish I possessed.  (Disclaimer: this may have just been my way to justify reading instead of writing, but whatever, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

The point is, by the time Saturday rolled around, I was ready to sit down and write.  For one thing, I felt kind of guilty about not writing at all on Friday.  For another, I am extremely competitive and I wanted to stay on track with my word count.  I wound up writing 4,957 words, which was more than what I needed to make up for my slacker Friday.

What is probably more exciting to me is the rest of my book outline came to me.  I had a general idea of the story I was going to write, but I was missing a lot of what happened in the middle and the end.  It sounds weird when I say that, but I was literally writing with the hopes the rest of the story would just come to me eventually.  Saturday, while working on my beginning, my middle and end plots finally came to me.  Now I just have to figure out how to exactly reach those points (little things), but at least I have a much better idea of where my characters are going (big sigh of relief).  

Which got me thinking about what I've already written.  I expect the beginning of my story may be too long.  I mean I was just spewing verbal diarrhea hoping I could come up with an interesting enough story to keep my attention so I could reach 50,000 words.  And as I hadn't really managed to think of a complete story ahead of time, I was winging it until the story came to me.  Excellent plan, but probably not the best way for me to come up with a cohesive story.  Plus, if I detail the middle and end of my story the way they should be, I will be left with an extremely long book.

Which basically leaves me with two options:

1.  Edit the crap out of my story (necessary regardless); or

2.  Break this up into several books.

I am not sure how you determine whether to write a stand along book or instead write a series.  Part of  me thinks this is kind of presumptuous.  Ok a huge part of me thinks worrying about that is presumptuous.  Whatever.  Instead of worrying about it, or even thinking too far ahead about whether I can even come up with enough to fill one book, much less several books, I am going to just continue what I'm doing.  Writing without worrying (well at least not worrying much).  Hopefully, the rest will work itself out later.

Day 11 Stats:

Wrote Today: 1,770 words

Total Written: 23,002 words 

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