Thursday, November 12, 2009

NaNoWriMo in full swing...

This is serious business. It does seem to be working though... I'm deep into the National Novel Writing Month contest. My participation success hinges on completing 50,000 words by Nov. 30. I'm a *titch* behind on the daily word count goal... I'm like 1.5 days behind, putting me at about 14.5K. Not too shabby.

It's a good thing we aren't allowed to edit, because I can feel myself doing things that I don't like. For one, I'm usually very cerebral when it comes to character decisions and how the plot moves. But in all honesty, I would never finish this project if I tried writing it like I write everything else. I write for a living anyway, so I really just don't have the hours needed in a day to be able to take a few days to work through an impending decision in my head. I just have to write it.

So what all of this basically means is that I can almost guarantee that the rewrites alone will alter about half of the book. But that's what December is for, editing... or so I'm told.

Right now I have several characters going that aren't coming off the page well. They are lacking physical description, emotional tendencies and a general persona to fill up their own space. My lead is still a tad too self deprecating. But the hooker? She's a complex little thing. She might be my favorite character so far, which actually is good because a character like that needs to be likable.

I went out and bought a mini notepad to keep my NaNoWriMo efforts more organized. I read that someone else who's doing this keeps pads of paper all over the house for when an idea creeps into their head. I thought that was great because I can always remember those moments when I think of something but might not think it's important enough to track down paper for. Then after it's gone from my memory, I'm pissed. This will hopefully curb some of that.

Other than that it's been more of the same... working lots, but not more than usual... keeping my little apartment life in order (or trying... that monthly massive clean is looming...) for Chris and I... and trying to stay in contact with friends, family, etc. Now I know why lesser mortals who obsess over their work have no friends or family. It's a job in and of itself to keep your relationships strong when you work as much as I do. I suppose I can sleep when I'm dead, but I may very well die on Dec. 1 after this is all over.

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