This NaNoWriMo update brought to you by Carpal’s Tunnel. Come and visit our world class facilities as your fingers are swept away in the agonizing . . . blah blah blah.
After being off track for the last five days, I have officially caught back up, and I am now on course to complete the challenge in just under 8 more days. There is still 13K words that I need to pull out of the blue and given I’m working from a bare-bones outline, keeping inspired has been anything but easy.
For the first time in my writing career, I’ve found myself bouncing from section to section of the manuscript. My normal pattern is to work linearly through the story, but not under these circumstances. When I sit down to write, I have to just start going, somewhere. Otherwise, I’ll sit and stare at the screen for 20 – 30 minutes and not write a single word.
So, its kind of odd having chapters 13 and 14 done, but not chapters 8 – 12. Something I’ve known all along and this seems to underscore it is the first third of the story and the last third of the story are the easiest to write for me. That center third can be me very tough. I have to keep in mind that the goal is not to complete the book in 30 days, but to write 50K words of the 70-80K words that I know the book will end up being. Once I get through this ramp up month, I’ll be able to take some time and structure things properly.
One of the drawbacks to “cramming” so much in so little time, is I’ve had very little time to update everyone on the plot development, characters and interesting tidbits. From the very onset of this project almost three years ago now, I had a special death planned for Rift. Well, I wrote that chapter this last week but when I got to the end, my creative consultant forbade me to let him die. It was a great scene, but I couldn’t go through with it, so I spared him. When you eventually get to read this book, I would love to hear back from some of you if you felt like it would have been appropriate at that time to let him die.
I am on vacation the next six of the last eight days. Hopefully, cranking out those last 13K words will be easier than the last 13K.
Good Night.
